After the Quake
by Incanto
Summary: Years after their adventure, Tai and the gang are living uneventful and, for the most part, happy lives in and around Tokyo. They're about to confront a very different challenge.
1. Nothing Important Happened Today

AN: _So yeah, it might seem irreverent to write a Digimon fanfic about the recent tragedy in Japan. The thing is, I actually live in Japan and, looking back, watching Digimon as a kid played no small part in the chain of events that brought me here. I wondered how those kids would react to the situation I'm in now. _

_Most of them are in their senior year of high school. Season Two never happened; I got nothing against the 02 kids, but I couldn't juggle such a big cast. It would also mean Digimon in the real world, and as charming as the idea of Ikkakumon helping to haul away tsunami debris might be, I'm not going there._

2:29 PM 03/11/2011

**1. Nothing Important Happened Today**

When things got tough, Yamato "Matt" Ishida often found himself composing song lyrics in his head. The worst events, set to music, became detached from his present suffering, and at the same time oddly beautiful. In this situation though, all his attempts ended up sounding like off-key theme songs from 1970's sitcoms.

_She's Mimi, Mimi, the girl who loves to shop_

_Sometimes she drags her friends along_

_On a trip to hell_

_If you like free time or sitting down, don't be friends with Mimi, Mimi_

_The demon princess of Harajuku_

_She-e's…Mimi!_

Apparently, the Demon Princess of Harajuku's other reluctant escort was having similar thoughts. Slouching along on her right, hands buried in the pockets of his school uniform slacks, Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi muttered:

"I still don't see why the queen bee of Odaiba Senior High couldn't invite some friends who actually _shared_ her bizarre fixations."

Walking the streets of Harajuku, the fashion capitol of Japan, seemed to invigorate Mimi at the same rate it exhausted her friends. Both hands loaded down with bags, she nonetheless managed a sort of pirouette as she shot back at them:

"You ought to talk about bizarre _fixations_, little Mr. Akihabara, since your idea of a good time is getting served six thousand yen tea by a cat-eared maid! And as for you Matt, I'm keeping _you_ out of trouble. Without me, you'd be picking up girls in Shibuya."

Matt flushed. "I do not pick up girls!"

"That's right," smirked Izzy, "you're so good-looking you can't beat them off with a stick. You know, if it really bothers you, you might try combing your hair once in a while."

"Or hanging around you more often."

"Touché," said Izzy, grinning.

The group's resident nerd had gotten harder to tease since going on his first date. It hadn't gone anywhere, and the details were hazy, but there was no question Izzy was growing up. As, Matt supposed, they all were.

"Besides," said Mimi, still craning her head as she trotted ahead of them (and her smile at that moment went some way toward reminding them why they were friends with her at all), "you guys are my oldest and bestest friends! Don't I go to all your concerts, Matt?"

"Are you implying listening to my music is as painful as a six-hour shopping marathon with you?"

"She's got a point there, Matt."

"And Izzy, didn't I keep you company in that, like, four-hour line for that dumb video game? What was it, Solid Hero Fantasy Eight?"

"She's got a point there, Izzy."

"At least we got to stand still!"

There was moment of silence, as light smiles played on all their lips. But Matt couldn't resist:

"Still, you know you'll wear each of those things about once."

Mimi gave a light _hmph_ and quickened her pace.

Matt glanced around. It was really a beautiful day. The cherry blossoms wouldn't bloom for a week or so, but already it felt like spring, with delicate green foliage beginning to shade in the trees lining the boulevard, and a seemingly endless stretch of pure blue sky.

Besides, the day hadn't been a total bust. Not all the fashion in Harajuku was girly. He'd found a cool leather wallet, worked with shark's teeth.

Then Mimi turned and winked.

"Okay, I'll take pity on you guys just once."

They gave exaggerated sighs of relief.

"Let's go eat a crepe or something," she said, "like over by the Meiji shrine? I bet they have all those stalls out."

Matt realized he was starving.

"I could go for some takoyaki," said Izzy thoughtfully.

They were near the station. On the other side, the shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji stood among thick trees on the edge of Yoyogi park.

The fastest way to cross the wide street and reach it was over a precarious-looking, blue steel walkway that straddled the intersection. It stood a good twelve feet over the roofs of passing cars. As they began to climb, Mimi hissed to Matt:

"You're on guard duty."

_Guard duty_ meant that, whenever they had to climb a steep flight of stairs, one of the boys walked behind Mimi to keep from affording anyone else a glimpse up her skirt.

"And she teases me about picking up girls," grumbled Matt. "You're not winning any modesty contests with a cut that short, missy." Although she wasn't his type, the appreciative glances Mimi had drawn, that day alone, caused a flare of something like jealousy in Matt.

"Matt," said Izzy in mock-disapproval, "you know Mimi would never be unfaithful to Joe while he's off doing his internship."

"Oh, will you _stop_ with Joe. I mean he's sweet and all, but…"

She was in no bantering mood. Sandwiched between him and Izzy, she took the steps one at a time, deliberately, with both hands on the railings.

"I hate this thing," she whispered, "you can feel it _shake_ as the cars go under."

"It's perfectly structurally sound," said Izzy.

"That's what they said about the Titanic, but it didn't do poor Leo any good."

"For the last time Mimi, we've been over this," said Matt, "Leonardo di'Caprio was not actually on the Titanic."

"How would you know, you weren't there.—Oh. Would you just look at that."

They had reached the walkway, and from that vantage point they could see all down the long street, across the station roof with its quaint clocktower and bronze siding, to the rich dense trees of the park. Even the people, the drab suits of businessmen passing by underneath, sparkled like jewels in the sun.

Izzy scratched his head. "Not bad," he admitted.

"Oh, Izzy." Sighing happily, Mimi leaned her head on the walkway railing, forgetting her terror as they had climbed the stairs. "All you see when you look at anything is a stream of zeroes and ones."

Izzy actually blushed, faintly. Matt was staring into the distance, tapping the railing with the fingers of one hand.

It happened.

The walkway shuddered. _It's true_, Matt thought, _you really can feel it shaking._

Then it gave a huge lurch. On instinct he grabbed Mimi's arm, even as they were thrown back away from the railing. He fell and pulled her with him, landing painfully on his tailbone. He caught his breath and looked up: Izzy was clinging to the railing with both arms, wrapped around it like an octopus.

Mimi's first instinct when she fell was to press her legs together, wadding the skirt between them. Her eyes were clamped shut.

"Hey! Hey, you alright!" said Matt, shaking her; but he couldn't hear his own voice.

The bridge was still shaking.

"Oh my God," whispered Izzy. Still sitting down, Matt couldn't see whatever he was seeing.

Slowly, bracing his legs wide, he managed to get up, pulling Mimi with him. She refused to open her eyes, and he helped her fasten her hands on the railing, before standing with one arm around her. He looked out alongside Izzy.

Traffic on the road was at a standstill. A few cars stood at odd angles, but none had crashed. On the sidewalk, some people had flattened themselves to the ground while others, stubbornly, kept walking, clinging to vending machines and bicycle racks as they went. A child was crying, loud and shrill.

In a few moments they had gotten used to the shaking on the walkway, and it was a shock to see streetlights wobbling like stalks of grass. Even the tall buildings seemed to be moving. Then he was sick to his stomach and shut his eyes too.

_It's just an earthquake_, he thought. _You've been through this before. Get a hold of yourself, Yamato Ishida._

But it was the worst earthquake he'd felt in eighteen years of living in Tokyo.

_T.K._, he thought. His brother, Kari and their underclassmen friends were probably still in school; only the seniors had a half-day. His dad was supposed to be interviewing some celebrity at his Shinjuku office. He felt some relief, as if remembering where they were meant they were safe. And all the time he was thinking, the shaking went on.

He heard a car horn. What moron was honking at a time like this. But he was confused…it happened so quickly no one knew what to think. And even when you could think, rationally, your heart was hammering, sending more blood to the brain than it needed…

He felt a slight shudder through his arm, and realized Mimi was crying.

"You alright?" he hissed again. "C'mon, say something."

"I-I'm alright," she managed.

Matt counted to himself. _One. Two. Three…_

When he had counted twenty-seven, he realized it was over. The walkway was still trembling, but somehow he could feel it was residual, and the ground underneath had stopped moving. But he had lived through enough quakes to know an aftershock was coming.

He opened his eyes, and saw Izzy's livid face looking suddenly much older. Now it was the younger boy who took charge:

"Let's get off this thing before the next one hits. No, let's get to the other side. We can walk through the shrine to Yoyogi park, we'll be safe there."

Matt silently nodded. They had been alone on the walkway, and now they crossed it as fast as they dared, pressed close together.

The moment they reached the sidewalk Izzy took a huge breath and said: "That was a big one."

"Would you say it was _prodigious_?" Matt joked, feebly.

Izzy cracked a smile. "Heh. Yeah."

* * *

Yoyogi Park was littered with people. Businessmen in groups with their suitcases; families, huddled together on picnic blankets, who had been there to begin with; young couples holding hands. Some were sharing the canned coffee or snacks they'd bought minutes earlier with each other. The three kids picked their way in between, until they found an open spot far away from any trees, and sat on the hot dry grass.

Mimi opened a pack of tissues and dabbed at her eyes. Izzy was fiddling with his cellphone.

"No signal," he reported grimly.

"No way!"

As if embarrassed that it hadn't been the first thought to cross his mind, Matt quickly pulled out his own; but it was true.

"Don't worry," said Izzy, "I'm sure Tai and the others are alright. After all, we didn't see anyone get hurt here."

"Geez, man," Matt grumbled. "Don't talk to us like we're kids."

"Sorry."

"Besides…maybe they are alright. I sure as hell hope they are. But y'know," and with a glance at Mimi, he hesitated, but had no choice but to finish, "some people died today."

Izzy shook his head. "Inconceivable."

"Come on. You felt that. I don't think we were anywhere near the what do you call it, the epicenter. But some people were."

Izzy looked away.

Then, as he had feared, Mimi started crying again. She buried her face in a tissue. He felt bad, but he knew; he always had to speak his mind. Somebody had to say certain things, and that somebody was often him.

"Sorry, Mimi," he muttered.

"N-no," she said, "it's true. It's selfish of us to think about ourselves and…and the p-people we care about at a time like this…isn't it?"

Matt sighed. "Let's not think about what is and isn't selfish right now," he said. "All we can do is wait and see what happens."

Izzy nodded. Then he reached in his jacket pocket.

"I um…I have some of those pretzel sticks here. I was saving it for later, but…you guys want some?"

* * *

Hours later, the trio walked along the side of the road. The trains out of Harajuku station had all stopped. They had passed one train, its compartments balanced uneasily, topheavy on the rails, while a long line of people were led away by uniformed station attendants. Traffic on the road beside them continued to stand still. They had joined a column of people, all trudging mostly in silence in one direction. It was getting dark.

Izzy's idea had been to reach Shinjuku, not too far by foot, where Matt's father had his offices. As a reporter, he would have some idea what was going on, and might even have access to a telephone line. Besides, Matt's dad was just…cool. He was the sort of adult you wanted around at a time like this.

Matt was shaking his cellphone again. "C'mon, you piece of junk, work!"

Still so signal. Surely he thought, if there were one competent person alive in Tokyo, they'd have gotten the network up by now. But then it occurred to him, maybe they were keeping it down on purpose. Because if it went up, every person in Tokyo, just like him, would be calling every other person at once.

Izzy patted his shoulder. It was an unexpected gesture, especially from Izzy, and Matt jumped.

"Give it up," said the younger boy softly.

For perhaps the hundredth time that day, Matt sighed. He nodded.

He was hungry and thirsty, they all were. The vending machines they passed were all inoperative, and the last of Izzy's pretzel sticks long gone. But not even Mimi complained.

Then their luck took a turn for the better.

"Hey! Hey!" A loud voice. There had been so much shouting, so much noise that day, they ignored it at first. Until it added: "_Yamato_! Don't pick this moment to have some fit of teenage angst and ignore me!"

And Matt felt a flood of something like horror that he hadn't recognized his own father's voice. Had he been that out of it? Had they all been?

They looked wildly around. Mr. Ishida was leaning out the passenger window of an NHK news van, stalled in the opposite, southbound lane. A cigarette was oozing smoke from the corner of his mouth, his sleeves were rolled up, and the hair on his burly arms showed black in the twilight.

Without a thought they rushed between the cars, almost colliding with the side of the van. Not minding the cloud of toxic smoke, Mimi gripped his shoulder. "Mr. Ishida…!" Matt and Izzy were right beside her.

"Looks like you kids had the same idea as me. But this is as far as I made it before the damn traffic seized up, pardon my French. Good thing we caught each other, huh?"

"With all due respect, that's a wild understatement, Mr. Ishida."

"Hey, Izzy. Glad you were there looking after my no-good son."

"Dad," said Matt urgently, "do you know…about T.K.? And Mom?"

Mr. Ishida shook his stubble-dark chin, rolling the cigarette.

"The landline at the office might've been working, but I ran out here without thinking. Now I can't get a signal either.—But don't worry. I haven't heard any stories of buildings falling over. It was just a bad quake, that's all. I'm sure your brother is fine."

_Everyone's telling me that_, thought Matt. _First Izzy, now dad._

"Anyway…" and Mr. Ishida's eyes shut briefly. He coughed. "From what I hear, it didn't hit anywhere near here. It was up north, near Sendai. They said something about a tsunami. It's the folks up there we should be worried about."

"Sendai!" gasped Mimi. "That's so far away! Then...if it was _that_ bad here…"

"Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?" said Mr. Ishida.

Matt and Izzy shared a glance.

_You were right_, Izzy's eyes spoke clearly. _People died._

Then the same thought struck both of them, and Mimi, at once. They went stiff.

"Well, I got bottled water and some snacks, so why don't you kids just climb in the van and we'll wait it…" Mr. Ishida was saying leisurely, then he raised one eyebrow: "What's wrong?"

"Sendai," said Matt.

"That's in Miyagi prefecture," said Izzy.

"That's where he was," said Mimi.

"Doing his internship," Matt finished.

Then all together: "_Joe_!"

* * *

_To be continued._


	2. Raise the Antenna

AN: _The character mentioned in this chapter, to be introduced later, isn't meant to be some weird OC or self-insertion; he's just there to give a perspective I wouldn't have otherwise._

* * *

**2. Raise the Antenna, We Must Attempt to Live**

There is an awful moment, just after waking, when the events of the past day filter into the brain. We consider—we hope—it was a dream. Sometimes the real horror of an event fails to strike us until then. The stoic Matt, whose first reaction to any shock was, _that wasn't so bad_, had known many such moments. Some nights he dreaded going to sleep, knowing his present calm would only last until his eyes closed. With morning came knowledge. Knowledge that he'd fought his best friend, that he might never see him again. Knowledge of what the words _your father and I don't love each other anymore_ really meant.

Today he woke on what he realized was a leather sofa, just barely long enough to accommodate his folded-up body, instead of his bed, and that began the process of recognition. The leather was smooth and cold against his cheek. Slowly, mechanically, he replayed images and sounds from the day before. One in particular, like a spell; Izzy's words:

_The hospital Joe was working at was pretty far inland. It's unlikely he was hurt._

That might be true. But he could imagine, all too easily, Joe jumping into water to save a drowning boy, forgetting he couldn't swim. Then he remembered that had actually happened once, no wonder he could imagine it.

Jyou "Joe" Kido, the boy who could be trusted with everyone's safety except his own.

Matt smelled tobacco and realized he wasn't alone. The room was a corner office, with white shades drawn over floor-length windows filtering the steel-gray morning light. His father, a big dark shape, sat on the edge of a desk smoking. He looked over as if he had known Matt was awake.

"'Morning."

"Good morning," whispered Matt.

"Coffee?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

As he pulled himself upright, his father pressed a cold can of Boss coffee into his hand.

"The vending machines were dropping these for free. Heh, I felt bad, but I grabbed as many as I could. Got a lot of mouths to feed after all."

That was right. They'd all come here last night, joining his dad's co-workers, the anchor with her pretty coiffed hair, the cameraman with the ponytail, who couldn't get home with the trains stopped. Except for one reporter, that sixty-year-old bald dude, who'd shrugged before setting off to walk to Chiba city, over eight hours away, to check on his daughter and her family.

Matt mutely nodded. He popped the can and sipped cautiously at the sweet cold liquid. He was looking at his father hopefully, and at last, one of these men of few words took pity on the other and shook his head:

"No news. No good news at least." Then Mr. Ishida reconsidered. "Well, the trains are running again. And we got visitors."

From the landline the night before, they'd been able to make sure most of their friends and relatives were safe.

Matt perked up. "T.K.?"

"Actually," said Mr. Ishida and chuckled, "pretty much your whole gang's here. They're waiting outside."

"Okay. Just gimme a minute."

For all his tough guy image, Matt hated not being able to take a shower. He felt filthy in his day-old clothes, and wouldn't have presented himself in front of anyone but his oldest friends.

"Heck," his father was saying, "the office aint been this lively since we pulled an all-nighter covering that bribery scandal…"

If he listened, Matt could hear the faint noise of a television set from a nearby room. He glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly eight in the morning.

* * *

The door to the station lobby was already open. Matt went and stood there, silent; and the sights of his friends' faces, before they even noticed him, produced a strong impression of their safety and health. It was as if he had managed what he wished he could do yesterday: somehow watch over them from afar.

T.K. and his mother; Tai Yagami and his sister Kari; Mimi and Izzy. They looked so dazed, so pale, had dressed so unthinkingly, they all might as well have spent the night at the office. Matt wondered what they had done; if they'd been lucky enough to be home.

Only two faces missing: Sora, who was studying abroad her senior year in New York. And of course one other.

There were several large white chairs and a sofa in the lobby, a glass table strewn with magazines and newspapers, and the small television he'd overheard from the office. The wall was hung with faded plaques and awards. There were several open cans of coffee and plastic wrappers on the table. His mother sat on the sofa, one arm around T.K. and one around Kari, watching the television. The screen faced away from him. Mimi was half-curled in a chair, looking at, if not appearing to read, a fashion magazine. Matt realized with a shock it was the first time, perhaps since their adventure years ago, he'd seen her without makeup on.

As for the great Tai, he sat with both arms flung over the back of a chair, stretched out, drawn and nervous, the athlete at rest. Time had done something to diminish his mane of hair, but not the energy in his features. Izzy paced in tight circles nearby.

Tai and Izzy, unusually for one if not the other, were discussing politics.

"So I hear Prime Minister Kan went in front of parliament and asked them to _save his country_," said Tai, his head thrown back, eyeing the ceiling. "Kind of cool, right? Like something the Emperor used to do."

"Well, he is a politician," said Izzy. "They're good at that kind of gesture."

"I like Kan. He's tough."

Izzy raised an eyebrow. "What sort of factual basis could you possibly have for saying that, Tai?"

"I dunno, he just looks tough! He looks kind of like Matt's dad."

Izzy considered. "Hmm. I suppose he does.—Still, I'm surprised you even knew who the Prime Minister was."

Come to think of it, Matt wasn't sure he could name the past five prime ministers in order, they came and went so quickly.

Then suddenly of all people Mimi, who had been scanning the magazine pages with glassy eyes, looked up and saw him. "Matt!"

"Matt!" echoed Izzy, then with chilling gravity: "Good morning."

A chorus of voices joined in and they all sprang to their feet. Narrowly beating out T.K., Tai came first in line before the open door; then stopped abruptly. In a truly odd moment, neither quite meaning to, he and Matt shook hands. Perhaps they had been about to hug, thought better of it, but had already leaned in too close to get away without touching each other.

The former Mrs. Ishida hung back, one hand curled on her breastbone. She had never been a touchy-feely sort of mom. Instead T.K. came forward and gave his brother a quiet, apologetic hug. Matt patted him on the head.

"Hey, sprout. Glad you're okay. Just tell me you didn't wet yourself, huh?"

"Matt, that's terrible!" came Kari's solemn, pedantic voice, always sounding absurdly beyond her years; he flinched at her judgment. "T.K. was really brave. He's a class rep, you know. He helped get everyone out of the school, to the evacuation point."

T.K. scratched his head. "Aw c'mon, Kari. Anyone could've done that.—Hey Matt, where were you when it hit? Have you heard anything about Joe?"

Matt was studying his brother's face carefully. An impression was forming. It didn't exactly disturb him, or make him think any less of T.K. Still. He was smiling. Just like all those years ago, it was an adventure for him. They were all safe; so what was wrong? Nothing in _that_ world had scared T.K. one bit. He carried that optimism now. Matt couldn't decide if that was entirely a good thing.

"No," he said carefully. "No one's heard anything from Joe. Listen…T.K., I'm glad you're safe, I mean it. But we've got to be ready. This could get a lot worse."

Once again, Kari's terrifying young voice (although he saw she was smiling): "There _you_ go again. Do you remember the time, I asked you if my brother was going to be alright? You should have just said yes, you know."

Tai pounded him on the shoulder. "She's right! I'm still here, huh? C'mon, Matt, don't be such a downer. We've been through worse than this."

"Have we? Really?"

Matt's eyes pierced him. Tai stepped back.

Why? He was the older kid; it should have been his job to comfort them, tell them everything would be alright. So why did he feel, instead, it was his job to remind them it might not be?

He gestured at the television. "Haven't you all been watching the news?"

That got them. Silence.

"How is it?" he asked softly.

Now his mother broke, and choked out: "Oh Yamato…it's terrible. Just terrible."

Tai scratched the back of his neck. "I won't lie. It's pretty bad, man."

_I knew it_, thought Matt. Somehow, even at that moment the day before, he'd known.

With a touch of concealed resentment, the issue of some conversation, or argument, Matt hadn't witnessed, Izzy said: "I still don't think it can have been _that_ bad. The media sensationalizes everything."

"I dunno, man," said Tai, "all I can say is, it looked like that time I tried to play with my Hot Wheels cars in the bathtub."

"I'm not denying the damage was severe in areas—"

"Anyway," Matt cut in, "has anyone talked to Sora?"

Tai nodded. "Sent her an e-mail. Said we'll Skype later. It's like dinnertime where she is, so maybe in a couple hours. Hey, you guys wanna come over? We could all say hi, I bet she'd like that!"

Speaking of which…

"Oh by the way, Kurt's fine too," said T.K.

Kurt Straub was the German exchange student his mother was putting up for the year. Although as tall as Matt, he was T.K.'s age. Of the older kids, Izzy knew him best; strangely enough the blonde, hulking amateur wrestler was a frequent visitor to Izzy's beloved Akihabara. He professed (in his clumsy Japanese) to love "all the pretty ladies," a phrase that had alarmed T.K.'s mother until she realized he was referring strictly to two-dimensional ladies.

"Poor Kurt," Mimi cooed. "I bet they never have earthquakes like this in Germany. His family must be so worried about him."

"The dude's basically a brick," said Tai, "he'll survive…"

Then from another wing of the studio, a loud voice reached them: "_And we're live_!"

Raucous cheers followed.

The children exchanged puzzled glances, and Tai had time to whisper: "I guess we're live?" before Mr. Ishida bounded into the room, rubbing his palms together, boyish in his excitement.

"Ha ha, I must be the only guy in Tokyo who's happy to be stuck at the office! We'll give 'em a day of coverage they'll never forget. Now, who wants the honor of being our very first…interview…?"

Catching his ex-wife's eyes, he stopped in mid-gallop, lowered his head.

"Dear," she addressed him out of habit. "Don't you think you should ask the children if they're in any shape to be giving interviews, first?"

Tai stepped forward. "No, it's alright, Ms. Takaishi. Isn't it, you guys?"

Izzy and T.K. nodded.

"We have an obligation to let people know we're alright," said Izzy, then his eyes strayed to the television, "or at least that some of us are."

"Like Sora," said T.K.

"And Kurt's mom and dad," added Mimi.

"That's right," said Tai. "Are we ready for this or what?"

"Yeah!"—loudest from the youngest children, T.K. and Kari.

"I can't hear you! I said are we ready for this or what!"

"_Yeah_!"

* * *

_Lucky_. The English word grated on Sora's ears.

She didn't know why. No one who'd said it meant her anything other than the best. But she felt so much the opposite, it shocked her.

_You sure were lucky, huh?_

She sat on a bench in Central Park. It was colder in America this time of year than in Japan, and she was wrapped in a gray wool coat. Gray, like the sky overhead, the still-dead foliage lining the walks. No part of her was happy to be here.

It had been a year of quiet shocks. Nothing could have prepared her for the difficulty of living abroad. Not being able to walk into a convenience store and buy a familiar soda was torture. Then, just when she thought she might be getting used to it, this.

There was nothing odd about a girl sitting alone on a park bench. Still, she was drawing more glances than usual. She knew what they were thinking. Trying to figure out if she were Chinese, Korean or Japanese, and accordingly, how bad they should feel for her.

In the silence she got up and started walking.

Remembering friends. In the early days last fall, seeing their grainy faces through the magic of Skype. Her smiling and pretending nothing was wrong, she was doing fine, she loved New York. She loved it so much she could marry it. Not a word about gross hot dogs, or creepy lechers, or being afraid of black men on the subway even knowing she shouldn't be and it made her a horrible person. Mimi squinting, leaning forward: "Have they gotten bigger? Oh my God they totally got bigger, it must be something in the air!" And she blushed purple and crossed her arms over her chest.

Japan had seemed like an imaginary country, but she knew it was still there. Now she couldn't be sure everything _was_ there. She remembered hearing in class about Schrödinger's Cat, the thought experiment where you put a cat in a box with poison, and without your being able to know if it ate the poison, somehow it was alive and dead at the same time. Schrödinger's Mimi. Schrödinger's Joe.

She didn't know long she walked, down the looping paths under dead branches, past statues of white people with beards she didn't know, before a voice called out in fluent Japanese.

"Hey kid, you Japanese?"

She shook her head and looked up. Three businessmen in suits were sitting on a blanket, eating their bento dinners, probably from one of the high-class delis that catered to Japanese expats. Two younger guys, one older, with an obvious wig, probably their supervisor. He was the one who'd called. They looked tired, but friendly.

There was an open laptop computer between them.

Sora nodded. "_U-un_."

"C'mon over," said the supervisor. "I bet you're worried, huh? We got wifi and a live feed to Tokyo."

Normally, she would never accept an initiation from three strange men. Today, she walked over without hesitation. She bowed, muttered "_yoroshiku onegaishimasu_," sat down with her legs crossed to one side.

There was a surreal casualness to the whole exchange. They didn't ask her name and she didn't ask theirs.

"The news here makes it sound like half the country is underwater, right?" said one of the younger men, still chewing rice.

"I bet they'd like that, wouldn't they?" said the other. "Ford Motors would throw a picnic."

"Aw c'mon, Seiji, don't talk like that. It's not like they don't care."

"We ah, we're with Honda," Seiji explained for Sora's benefit.

She kept nodding, unable to say a word.

The laptop showed a heavily pixilated live feed, but the audio came through clear as a bell.

"…straight from our Shinjuku offices," the lady anchor was saying. "Our very own Ishida-san's son, and his friends are here with us this morning…"

_Ishida._ Sora blinked. No way.

The reporter was Matt and T.K.'s mom. The boy to whom she held out the microphone…

"T.K.!"

_Takaishi Takeru_, read the caption, _fifteen years old._

"You mean you know that kid?"

She nodded.

"Small world," said the supervisor.

"Now Takeru," said Ms. Takaishi, giving no hint he was her own son, "can you tell us where you were at the time of the earthquake?"

"Sure," said T.K., his face wide and bright as ever. "I was at school. We um, see there's this kindergarten attached to our school, and we do this thing where the older kids hang out with them, like this big brother, big sister thing. So I was doing that, and everyone was kind of on edge cause there'd been a little quake the day before, so even though there was no alarm or anything, the teacher asked us to get the little kids out of there. I was Class Rep so I went last."

"How did that feel?"

"Well…I feel kind of bad saying it, but it was almost fun. Like being on a rollercoaster. All I thought about was what they'd told me to do."

"Weren't you scared?"

He took off that goofy safari hat he'd taken to wearing recently, scratched underneath it. "Some of the little kids were crying, I guess. But they cry when they trip and fall over."

_Like you did when you were that age_, thought Sora, and smirked.

Then through the relief of seeing T.K.'s face came pain. That should have been me, she thought, for no clear reason. I should have been answering those questions.

Then Mimi was facing the camera, forcing a smile. Her unmade-up face still delicately pretty.

_Tachikawa Mimi, age seventeen._

"Is there anything you'd like to say to our viewers out there?"

"Uh-huh. I'd like to tell everyone not to worry too much. And…Sora, if you're out there…the Mister Donut by Harajuku Station is still totally there. We can still go there like we used to."

A tear forced itself from Sora's left eye. She slapped at it like an insect; she hadn't felt it coming.

"You alright, miss?" asked Seiji.

"I'm fine."

"And Joe," said Mimi, "wherever you are, you'd better not do anything stupid, you hear me! Come back to us in one piece or else…or else I'll make you _really_ sorry!"

Now Sora had to laugh, hiding her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she was crying again, but silently, without tears, her chest shaking.

The old supervisor was looking at her. He might have a daughter her age, she thought. Quietly he asked:

"You from Tokyo?"

"Um, yeah. Odaiba."

"You wish you had been there, don't you?"

"Yeah," she whispered. "I wish I'd been there."

* * *

AN: _There isn't as much geography after the first chapter, but for the curious, here's a pretty good subway map of Tokyo with the major stations. It won't let me post a url so, fill in the blanks: www dot johomaps dot com / as / japan / tokyo / tokyo2 dot html_

_You can see Harajuku toward the lower left corner, and Odaiba opposite it to the lower right._

_Anyway, we've been following Matt so far, but I plan to break away and look at the other kids. Next up: Izzy!_

_So please keep reading and reviewing, and I hope you enjoy!_


	3. Endgame

AN: A few notes:

_-While I'm trying to set this in a realistic, present-day Japan, the kids still have their improbable hair colors. Why? Eh, I just can't imagine them any other way ^_^_

_-Also, while I'm not pretending the whole "saving the world" thing never happened, and even refer to some of those events, I notice I'm avoiding words like "digimon" and "digivice" for some reason. To make it more accessible to people who haven't seen Digimon? I don't know who would be reading this in the Digimon section of Fanfiction-dot-net if they hadn't seen Digimon. Oh well, anyway; all that stuff happened, but don't expect to hear a lot about it._

_-Finally re:this chapter, I don't play or really know anything about chess. People tell me these things._

* * *

**3. Endgame**

Three days had passed.

The Yamanote line, circling Tokyo's central districts from Shibuya to Shinjuku, around to Akihabara and back again, had resumed normal operation. The sweet feminine voice from the loudspeaker:

"The next station is, Akihabara, Akihabara. The doors on the right side will open."

A thin young man with close-cropped red hair sat by the door on the right side. With his serious expression, and a briefcase under one arm, he might have been mistaken for a junior salaryman.

A PDA buzzed in his pocket. Flinching, he took it out. There were two new messages from a Luzhin_819.

The first simply read _K3c_.

The second read in English, _Think about what I said, Izumi._

Izzy wasn't sure which disturbed him more.

Closing his eyes, he visualized the chessboard on the edge of his desk. The study where, three days ago, he'd returned home to find the floor a sea of books, pages fluttering in the breeze from an open window; but thankfully his pineapple laptop sitting with undisturbed smugness where it always did. And strangely, as if by a miracle, the pieces on the chessboard undisturbed.

He had met the Aleksey Kamarov, Luzhin_819, at an Asian regional tournament two years ago. His interests were too varied to devote himself to chess single-mindedly; but the school's chess club advisor had begged him to participate. He and Kamarov were the same age, had similar defensive playing styles, even similar haircuts. When they came up against each other in the semifinals, Kamarov beat him in the last of a grueling seven-game series, with a rare queen/rook endgame.

The loss seared him. He'd told himself he didn't care about the tournament; but he knew Kamarov was a kindred spirit, and playing him had the eerie quality of playing himself. Every since that day, unendingly, they'd played these chess-by-email games one after another. Of course any number of clients would have allowed them to play in real-time; but Izzy had been playing chess-by-mail since he was six, and loved the anticipation, waiting days for a letter. Every two hours, even in class (and in fact unbeknownst to his friends, this had ruined his first and only date), either he or Kamarov made their move. Even when things reached the tense endgame, they had to bite their texting thumbs and wait.

Their endgame this time was much more common, his pawn and king against Kamarov's lone king. He knew exactly the move to make: _p3f_. But it could wait until he'd done what he'd come to Akihabara to do.

Responding to Kamarov's other message was more difficult.

Two days ago the Russian had written him:

_GET OUT OF JAPAN NOW._

He'd blown it off with some joke about Chernobyl making Russians nervous. Typical. Even with fellow nerds he could make these social blunders. He hadn't realized Chernobyl was no joking matter for Kamarov, and neither was this.

He'd been following news reports of the Fukushima reactor carefully. He'd explained them to his friends. If there were cause for real concern, he told himself, he'd know. As if he—Koushiro Izumi—could be illogical.

* * *

_Ami_, located high in one of the towers across the street from JR Akihabara station, was a cut above the average maid café. Past a thick wooden door with sea-colored glass, its plush interior was a replica of one of the sunrooms from the Versailles palace. Once after closing time, the old owner had regaled Izzy with stories of tracking down each period chair, desk and lampshade from Tokyo antique dealers.

A sign on the door read _open_, but the sun-drenched room was empty. Izzy's heart sank. It looked like a room in the abandoned house of a dead man. The elegant curves of the furniture, the slightly cracked green leather, the delicate white blinds were all the same, but no one was there to enjoy them.

A bell on the back of the door tinkled and a maid rushed out. He recognized her. She went by Albertine here, but her name was Chieko. Freckled, short and slightly plump, it was remarkable how the frilly costume transformed her into a beauty. He'd once caught her sneaking out the service entrance for a smoke, and taken her for a cleaning lady. She'd been so embarrassed she refused to wait on him the next time he came.

Recognizing him she smiled pleasantly, but with a hint of his own sadness: "Welcome home, Master."

Usually when he walked in, Izzy felt himself every bit the commanding gentleman. He'd reply in kind, walk calmly to his seat, and spend an hour reading or doing homework without feeling a bit silly. Today he scratched the back of his neck, coughed, and put his briefcase on a chair.

"Hey, Chieko-san. Um…I'm not here as a customer."

Her pretty face wilted.

"The thing is…" How had he ever talked to her? What had made her different from the girls at school he froze up in front of? Looking away he managed: "This friend of mine is doing a benefit concert in Odaiba. Y'know, for the…you know. I wondered if you guys would let me put up one of his fliers."

In fact, the only item at odds with the décor was a corkboard by the door, with neon-colored announcements of specials, local bands and live houses.

"Of course," said Chieko shyly.

Izzy took out the flier and looked at it, as if for the first time. _Yamato Ishida and the Teenage Wolves._ In light of the concert, they'd thought about changing the name of the band to something less, well, stupid; but Matt stuck to his guns. He'd always known it was stupid, but at this of all times he felt like being himself.

"They're pretty good," Izzy lied (well who was he to talk, he listened to Classical). "You should come too."

She politely studied the flier as he pinned it to the board.

"So are you, like, going around to different places?"

"Every place I know."

"I'm sorry," said Chieko. "I don't know if it will be much help. Business has been slow. I mean...we're on a pretty high floor."

"People will come back. They can't just sit in their rooms all day." He surprised himself by sounding almost angry. More softly he asked: "Were you here? I mean when it happened."

She nodded.

"What did you?"

"We lit candles," she said, and gave a half-smile.

If he shut his eyes, he could imagine it. I must have been nice.

"Later," she went on, "a lot of people came in. We stopped charging. But even when we ran out of coffee and everything, a lot of them stuck around…it was weird." Her eyes were vague, remembering. "I sort of realized. A lot of them thought of us like family. Hey, Izzy. Am I family to you?"

"Sure," he replied, more easy now. "You can be my big sister if you want."

"You know…the first time you walked in here, I never imagined you were in junior high school."

"How long ago was that…? Four years? Man."

"You've grown up," she said.

"It doesn't feel that way."

He crossed to the window. The familiar street. People walking by, like usual, nothing seemed to be wrong. That's how it was these days. You could almost convince yourself nothing had happened. Then you looked down and noticed a hairline crack in the cement.

"Hey," called Chieko. "Are you still playing chess with that Russian guy?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, are you winning?"

"So far he's ahead one hundred fifteen to one hundred thirty-four," he answered without thinking. "Fifty-eight draws."

"Oh—I meant the game you're playing now."

Izzy frowned. "He's playing a tough game this time. Looks like a draw, but neither of us wants to give up. If he thinks he can win, I'm not about to quit."

The endgame. Between players of roughly equal skill, it often came down to stamina. Who wanted to win more.

His hero when it came to chess was Capablanca. He'd excelled at the endgame; as the situation narrowed, getting simpler, his understanding deepened to perfection. Izzy had to think about everything from beginning to end; and knew, for that reason, he would never be a great chess player. He got nervous, and at times could feel his resolve like a stick about to snap.

When he looked around, Chieko was playing with a strand of her hair. "I don't get it," she said. "If you guys know you're about as good as each other, why don't you just, like, shake hands and call it a draw?"

Izzy smiled. "You just don't get how boys' minds work."

"Must be why I'm single."

At that Izzy blushed, froze up again, and recollected his briefcase. But he still managed to say: "Listen, um…thanks. You know, for everything."

Chieko gave a decorous smile, bowed, and replied with perfect formality: "You're very welcome, Master."

* * *

Back in his room, Izzy stood over the board. He remembered all five moves that had been made since he'd left that morning, and one by one, pausing when it came to Kamarov's, imagining himself in his place, he played them out. He considered the new board. The same three pieces as yesterday, in a new pattern.

He collapsed on his chair. Considered the board from the side.

Counted down _three, two, one_: the PDA buzzed.

Two messages from Kamarov. First Izzy moved the king according to the first one; he'd expected it anyway, it was the only smart move. Then he tapped the screen with his thumb, reading the second. It's tone was so earnest, clumsy, he wanted to laugh but didn't.

_A young man of your intelligence has a higher obligation than to his country._

Well, thought Izzy. Was that true? And what exactly did it mean?

As if on cue, the room shook. The books teetered on their shelves; he'd run a piece of string across each one, now. His anime figurines rattled in their case; the most valuable ones he had already put in a drawer. The most familiar sound, the clothes hangers he kept on his door handle knocking against the frame. _Tap, tap, tap._

It was over. A minor aftershock from a worse one that morning. Although he had no expertise, he wondered: 5.0? 5.5? Did it matter?

He looked back at the chessboard. Then his phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Yo, Izzy." It was Tai. "You feel that one?"

"Sure," he shrugged. "Not even a pencil fell over. Why, was it worse at your place?"

Then it occurred to him Tai just wanted to talk, and he felt like a jerk. He felt like even more a jerk when, after a brief silence, Tai said:

"You sound really on edge these days."

"Can you blame me?"

"No! No, it's just…y'know, if you want to talk or anything. You can come by my place anytime."

School had been canceled for the week. They kept saying it would start up next Monday, but Izzy knew people on the PTA, and there was talking of pushing the whole semester back a month. He was probably the only one who considered that a tragedy. But maybe other kids missed the comforting school routine.

"Look," said Izzy, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take anything out on you."

"It's cool, man. I'm worried about you, that's all."

"I'm fine.—Say, Tai."

"Yeah?"

"Would you say that _a young man of intelligence has a higher obligation to his country_?"

"Huh? I dunno. I guess if that's true, I don't have much of an obligation. But where'd you pull that one out of it?"

Izzy stared at the white king.

"I think a friend of mine is suggesting I should carry my huge brain to high ground, while the rest of you numbskulls drown."

"Oh. That Russian kid again, huh?"

He'd told Tai about Kamarov's first appeal.

They had distant cousins in Los Angeles who were willing to put them up. Distant cousins…just like his adoptive parents had been to his birth father. He had a large family, it seemed. But his parents weren't discussing it. Sometimes he even got the feeling they were waiting for him to make his preference known. As if they respected his opinion that much. Together, the three of them looked at the incomprehensible graphs of the reactor core on the evening news, and they assumed he understood them.

Would that mean if things got worse, and they didn't get out in time, it would be his fault?

"Yo, Izzy! Still there, man?"

"Sorry, I spaced out. Listen, I'm not feeling great. Why don't we hang out tomorrow or something. I've got to think about this game…maybe I can finish him in one move."

"Sure. Come over anytime in the afternoon. If I'm out, Kari will be here. She'll make you tea or something till I get back."

"'Bye. Take care."

He hung up.

Then in that instant, he saw it. Mate in three moves. It was such an astoundingly obvious gambit, both he and Kamarov had missed it. Both two smart for their own good. He almost jumped up; but controlling himself, sat there quietly smirking. It remained to be seen if Kamarov would fall into his trap.

* * *

At two in the morning, two thirteen to be precise, Izzy was due to move. His parents had long since gone to bed, but he was old enough that they let him keep his own hours.

With no homework left, he'd been distracting himself by watching the news. About all he could manage to watch was foreign news; domestic coverage depressed him, and foreign coverage of Japan all struck him as oddly shrill and full of inaccuracies, though he was trying to withhold judgment. It was still too early for anyone to know much of anything.

The other big story was in Libya, where Colonel Gadhafi was refusing to give up power in spite of everyone apparently wanting him to. It seemed so obvious from the outside What would it take, an eight-year-old boy to walk up and tell him he was a jerk? A lot of crazy people in the world. Sometimes it was sanity that looked exceptional.

Then in America, everyone was still talking about some actor, Charlie Sheen, who was rapidly and obviously going insane while the media watched. Apparently he had "tiger blood." After an hour of this, Izzy decided it wasn't much of a distraction.

The digital clock read two twelve. His hand hovered over his king. He took out the PDA.

Outside, a light rain was falling. He'd dived so deep inside his own head, he hadn't noticed. He took a minute to draw the aroma of rain into his nostrils. Then his thumb whispered over the PDA keys as he sent two messages, one after the other.

_K2d_, read the first. _Mate_.

The second read: _What do Cl. Moammar Gadhafi and I have in common?_

He looked up. He breathed.

A moment later, two replies pinged his inbox.

_Congratulations_, read the first. _I have to admit you really got me._ The second:

_I give up. What?_

Izzy typed out his reply: _Neither of us are going anywhere._

* * *

AN: _Next up, Mimi! Ontanoshimi ni!_


	4. Material Girl

**4. Material Girl**

Children are capable of asking questions in a way adults find difficult, if not impossible, to answer. More than any perhaps, that most primal of questions:

_Why?_

Confronted with that simple _why_, Mrs. Yagami faltered.

The conversation took place at the breakfast table between her and her daughter, Kari, while Mr. Yagami silently ate his natto beans and rice with hot tea, careful to hide his face with a newspaper. Tai was sleeping in.

Looking her mother in the face, Kari asked in her spookily precocious voice: "Why does Kurt have to go back home?"

Mrs. Yagami sighed. "Some people where Kurt is from—the people at his school, probably his parents too—just think that's best for him. They want him to be safe, that's all."

"Then we should we leave, too?"

"Honey…you know that isn't possible."

The next words out of Kari's mouth threw her mother for another loop.

"You're still talking to me like I'm eight years old, mom," she said. "I don't want to know what _they_ think. I want to know what _you_ think."

Mrs. Yagami sighed again. She looked away, through the open window, and lifted her tea but didn't drink it. Finally she said:

"It isn't up to me, honey. Ms. Takaishi and T.K. are Kurt's host family. And I'm not sure even they could do anything if they wanted to. If Kurt's school tells him he has to go home, he has to go home. There are these things called visas…"

"I talked to T.K. He says Kurt doesn't want to go anywhere. He says he cried when they told him. He's our friend, and I want to know why nobody's asking us what _we_ think."

Mrs. Yagami could only say: "That's just how the world works. It isn't always fair. Kari, we've had this conversation before.—Isn't that right, dear?"

From behind the shield of his newspaper, Mr. Yagami grunted. He knew better than to involve himself.

Kari, who had hardly touched her breakfast, picked up and set down her milk glass for effect: "I don't see why it has to be unfair. If people keep saying it is that way, it keeps being unfair. Maybe we aren't Kurt's host family. But if we say it's okay, that helps everyone else think it's okay—doesn't it?"

Finally her mother was at a complete loss for words. Looking away, she whispered: "Honey, I think it's wonderful you're so concerned for your friend. But this is hard on all of us. It's hard on me too. So please. Don't take it out on me."

That seemed to reach Kari. She too looked away, and said nothing more.

It was rare for Kari, the perpetual comfort and voice of reason to her friends, to get so worked up about anything. But leaving her apartment, she pounded down the metal stairs two at a time, not caring if she woke up the neighbors. She didn't know where she was going. She would know when she got there. Her smooth angelic face was as close to a snarl as it could approach.

The thing was, she hadn't known until that moment she considered Kurt a friend. He was goofy, he was loud, he couldn't speak good Japanese. She could never be sure if he was hitting on her, or if Germans were just friendly like that (and if he _was_ hitting on her she wouldn't know what to think). But he always said things that made her laugh. Mostly because of his poor Japanese, but he had a sense of humor. And you could tell, always, from the light in his eyes, he was happy to be in Japan. He was happy no matter what he did. When they crossed a bridge coming home from school, he'd lean over the railing to watch the carp in the river. They'd crossed that bridge a million times without thinking. Somehow only the foreigner noticed how pretty the carp were.

Then on the third-floor landing, where the Tachikawas lived, she ran into Mimi.

At first she only saw a mass of paper shopping bags, like a stormcloud with words like _Saks_ and _Uniqlo_ printed all over it. Or like an overripe tree of which Mimi, plain in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, was the slender trunk.

Again she wasn't wearing any makeup. Even telling herself it was Mimi, Kari hardly recognized her.

"Um, hey," said the older girl.

Kari fixed her with her best disapproving, kid-sister look. "Don't tell me you bought all that stuff today."

"N-no…that's not it."

Then Kari realized.

"Oh," she said. "You're donating it, huh?"

Mimi nodded.

"Sorry."

"It's okay."

"Listen, do you need a hand? You'll never make it as far as the depot."

In fact, Kari doubted if she could make it as far as the bottom of the stairs.

"Thanks."

Businesslike, Kari took four of the heavy bags out of Mimi's hands. In silence they started down the next flight of stairs.

All of them had changed over the past four days, however little. Izzy always seemed kind of mad, although about what she didn't know. T.K. still smiled, but not as much. Tai was always asking how she was doing, and calling their other friends at all hours of the day to check on them, which made her wonder if _he_ wasn't the lonely one. Matt hardly peeked his head out of the rented studio where he and his band were practicing for their gig. But at least from where Kari was standing, nobody had changed as completely as Tachikawa Mimi; and she wasn't sure it was for the better.

A donation depot for clothes and canned food had been set up by the Fuji TV station, and as they walked down the brick-paved Odaiba skyway toward it, Mimi spoke quietly:

"Kari. Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"And you promise you'll be honest?"

"Sure."

"Like, cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye, honest?"

Kari eyed her suspiciously. "Wha-at?"

Then Mimi looked straight ahead as she asked: "Am I a bad person?"

Even Kari, who prided herself in anticipating her friends' thoughts and feelings, was taken aback.

"What do you mean? Of course not. What even makes you think that?"

"_You_ know," said Mimi, although the answer did seem to make her feel better. She jostled the bags of clothes. "All I ever thought about was myself. I mean…I never thought about how much money I spent." Then in a flash of her old self, as if she honestly felt it hadn't been her fault: "It was the check card! That stupid check card! I wish I'd never applied for…"

Kari sighed. She might have patted Mimi on the shoulder, if both hands hadn't been full of shopping bags.

"Mimi, there's nothing wrong with wanting to look good, and there's nothing wrong with spending money. I don't know. A lot of people had jobs making those clothes."

"But…but what if it was at some horrible sweatshop in Tibet! I never thought about anything like that! And do you know, the d-day it happened…I was in Harajuku you know and Matt, he…he told me I wouldn't wear anything I was buying more than once and…he was a _ri-i-ight_."

"Mimi, don't _cry_."

If Kari had said it in a comforting tone, Mimi might have burst out weeping right there. But her sensible, kid-sister voice, as if of course it would be ridiculous, did the trick. She got away with a few quiet sniffs.

"Besides," said Kari, "you've donated stuff before, right?"

"I guess…when I thought about it. But there was tons of stuff in the storage unit. This is some of it."

The funny shape of the Fuji TV station, like a spherical UFO crashed into a half-finished building, loomed over them. Kari tried to catch Mimi's eyes, suddenly wanting to tell her something.

"Y-yes?"

"Mimi, listen. Listen, okay?"

"I'm listening."

Kari said slowly: "Feeling bad about yourself isn't going to make anyone else feel better. That isn't the _you_ we like."

"But I'm not feeling bad because I want other people to feel better," said Mimi. "I'm feeling bad because I _want_ to feel bad, so I'm being selfish again, and the only reason I'm donating these clothes is so I can feel worse about myself because I know it'll _hardly_ do any good…and the reason I took so much in one trip must be because I _wanted_ someone to offer to help so they could see what I was doing…!"

This time, nothing could do any good. It was lucky Mimi wasn't wearing mascara. Kari helped her set down the bags so she could wipe her face, then quickly led her to a bench by the edge of the skyway. She sat with her until the tears stopped, looking into her face. When they finally did, she said:

"It's about Joe, isn't it?"

Unable to speak, Mimi nodded.

"That's why you feel selfish. Because of all the people up there, you only care if he's alright."

She nodded again.

"Do you think that's how Joe would want you to feel?"

She shook her head.

"But knowing that doesn't do any good. Does it."

Mimi nodded.

* * *

Anymore, when she wasn't with her friends (and sometimes when she was), all Mimi could bring herself to do was curl up on the couch and watch TV. She knew it was bad for her. Of all people, she took news the hardest. Izzy didn't watch TV, preferring to search out the most objective print articles online, and had urged her to do the same; but she couldn't help it. She'd been raised by TV. She had to know everything that happened, as it happened.

So she lay on the couch wrapped in her old Doraemon blanket, watching the news sideways. Sometimes her parents sat with her for a while, or brought her tea. They didn't know what to say.

Two people were rescued miraculously from a collapsed house in Miyagi-ken. But neither of them were Joe. They interviewed survivors in Matsushima, but none of them were Joe.

_Dummy_, she thought. _Liar_.

Everyone kept telling her he was okay. Why they believed that, she didn't know. Were they watching different news from her? And if he was okay, how could he be so selfish as not to tell them somehow? She knew the phones were down still, but couldn't he train a carrier pigeon or something?

Sometimes she didn't know what to think. The number of casualties being reported was horrifying, more people than she could imagine; but she hadn't known so many people lived up there to begin with. _Most_ of them were still alive. But whole towns had been swept away. The army was there, but some people in Sendai had gone back to living normal lives. Information reached her in the same slow, frightening way radioactive particles (still harmless if Izzy was to be believed) were drifting south on the wind.

Again and again, she remembered that day. Izzy teasing her. _Oh would stop about Joe_, she'd said, _he's sweet, but…_

But what? Really, what had she been about to say?

She'd known Joe liked her, hadn't she? She could never be sure how serious it was. But when the other Digidestined started getting nervous around girls, they still treated her and Sora like guys. Matt especially seemed immune to flirtation, and while at one time she'd considered asking him out, she decided she liked him better as a friend. Joe though always stammered around her, offered to carry her bags. She gave him chocolate on valentine's day, like all her friends, and he gave her back twice the amount on white day.

Shy, gentlemanly Joe. If he didn't have the guts to ask her out, she'd reasoned, it was his own fault. But if he had. What would she have said?

She had to admit, she probably would have said no. Joe was sweet, _but_. He wasn't cool. He didn't have a nice car and he couldn't play any sports. A part of her liked those things, and it was no good pretending otherwise. Pretending anything hurt people in the long run.

But that was then. This was now. And she watched the news for a glimpse of blue hair.

She was the worst. Whatever Kari said, she knew it. All those times she'd told Joe about her crushes and short-term boyfriends, forcing the words out of him; that he was happy for her, or that there were plenty more fish in the sea. Never once thinking how it made him feel.

Her father walked into the room. She saw his gray slacks in her horizontal vision. He coughed, and from the squeaky noise she knew he polished his glasses. She didn't look up.

"Sweetie?" he said.

"Yeah."

"Well, I was thinking, you know…"

Mimi tensed up.

She'd heard him on the phone, late at night, talking to his business partner in New York. He paced around the apartment as they talked, and when he came near her door she could hear the other half of the conversation. _Don't be a hero, Tachikawa,_ the voice had said. _We can put you up in a hotel until this things blows over. Come on, we'll write it off as a business expense. Tax-deductible. That daughter of yours would love it here. Broadway, Madison Avenue, the works._

Her father was a gentle man, but he didn't give in to pressure easily. Still, from his silence, she could tell he was thinking about it.

She dreaded what he was about to tell her. But all he said was:

"Haven't you thought about getting your hair done?"

Mimi sat up. "Huh?"

Her father looked at her, his kind, meek eyes behind his glasses.

"It's just, it's been an awfully long time. You have such beautiful hair, pumpkin, and it's starting to look like a crow's nest."

"Daddy, you're awful! How could I think about getting a haircut at a time like…" She trailed off. He was smiling at her.

"It's just, well. Besides, don't you think your stylist might be worried about you?"

"Daddy," she asked carefully, as if it might be true. "Have you gone crazy?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Tachikawa cheerfully. "Maybe I have. But think about it, won't you?"

Then he patted her lightly on the head and left the room.

Mimi sat up, half under the blanket, the television quietly flickering. She handled a bunch of her long, brown hair, winding it slowly around one finger. She held it in front of her eyes. Her father was right, it had more tangles than a chain-link fence.

Kari's words came back to her:

_This isn't the _you_ we like._

Out loud, but softly, she said: "Maybe I will."

* * *

AN: _Next up, Kari and T.K.! Otanoshimi ni!_

_Also, please do review! I may be an old war-horse of a fanfic writer, but it's always nice to hear what people think._


	5. Ohanami

AN: _I cheat a bit here; even with the excuse I provide, I'm pretty sure it's still too early in the year for cherry blossom viewing (they just bloomed here in Tokyo, and it's like the middle of April). Also because T.K.'s grandpa has a bit of a pottymouth, I considered upping the rating, but hey, it's all in context. Just don't go repeating any words you hear in this chapter, kids_

_Lastly, for any Japanese speakers out there, the vocal tic I imagine for Kurt is an overemphasized "deeeeesu" at the end of each sentence; so when he says "the Fuji Mountain!" he's saying "Fujiyama deeeesu!"_

* * *

**5. O-Hanami**

Now a week had gone by. The north-bound bullet train, passing through Sendai on its way to Aomori, was suspended indefinitely. However the popular Tokaido line, traveling west to Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima before arriving at Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu, was running as normal.

At six in the morning, as the sun was just beginning to tint the roofs of houses delicate oranges and pinks, the Takaishi family arrived at Tokyo Station to catch the first train to Fukuyama. They were a motley bunch. Kari, joining them, had slept over the night before; there were the Takaishis themselves, and finally the tall, blonde Kurt. Still as they stood on the platform, they looked like family.

The decision was final. Kurt had to return to Munich in a few days. But as emotional as he'd been on first hearing from his school, he accepted the verdict, like an adult, without complaint. It was clear he wasn't in the least afraid; but he had been raised to do as he was told.

T.K. and his mother had agreed that, at the very least, it would be unthinkable for Kurt to leave without seeing the cherry blossoms, which he had been looking forward to all year. They had yet to bloom in Tokyo. But each year they moved north in a tide, from the tip of Kyushu all the way up the main island of Honshu, before finally reaching Hokkaido. Natsuko Takaishi's father was still living in Fukuyama, a sizeable town in-between Hiroshima and Osaka; and while the three-hour train ride made for a grueling day trip, he'd invited them down.

Mr. Takaishi had met Kurt once, when he came to visit them last fall in Tokyo. Before the meeting she'd warned Kurt: "Don't mind my dad if he says anything weird. He's eighty-five…although, I'm pretty sure he's always been that way."

While they all yawned and scuffed their feet, nearly alone on the dark platform, Kurt was watching the track with his shining blue eyes. It would be his first ride. He'd planned a trip to Kyoto over spring vacation; but with the hotels full of people, especially foreign businessmen, fleeing the Tokyo area, that had fallen through. When the sleek white train pulled up, smooth as rainfall, T.K. almost grabbed his arm to keep him from jumping forward.

Kurt was a shade taller than Ms. Takaishi. In a green cardigan vest over a white shirt, looking especially grown-up, T.K. knew that people mistook him for his mother's husband, and his own father. It didn't bother him anymore. Instead, he shared Kurt's grin, acknowledging the bullet train _was_ pretty cool. Now Kurt was folding his arms, as if proud of something he'd created himself.

"So fast," he said. "So beautiful. And best of all, it looks like a giant…" and after a significant pause he winked and finished, "sausage." T.K. laughed and Kari, giggling in spite of herself, slapped his arm. Then she put her own arm through it.

"It's fast alright," she said, "and if we don't hurry we'll miss it. Come on."

"_Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for riding the shinkansen. This is a Hikari Superexpress bound for…Hiroshima. The next stop will be…Shin-Yokohama_."

"Ha, Hikari! Is your name!"

Somehow she'd known he would notice. It was the sort of thing Kurt did notice.

They made their way to four facing seats near the center of the car. The other passengers were mainly businessmen, half-asleep or dozing. The girls and the boys sat together opposite each other.

T.K. looked out the window. The early morning scenery looked grimy, but in an attractive way, as if this were _real_ life before the polish of the dull school or working day was applied.

Then he exchanged a glance with Kari. Putting a hand on Kurt's shoulder he said: "Listen, Kurt, this train is really fast, alright?"

"Yes, I know this! Is fast!"

"Well, just promise us you won't scream or anything once it gets up to speed, okay? No matter how excited you are."

Kari made a mock-pleading face, clasping her hands in front of her.

Kurt grinned again. "Okay! Is promise!"

The promise was quickly forgotten as the train sped out of Tokyo Station, quickly gathering speed as the buildings outside became gray ribbons, and white clouds appeared and disappeared in the sky like quick, solitary birds. One businessman sitting near the door quietly got up, folded his newspaper and walked out over Kurt's whooping and laughter: "Ha, ha, ha…!"

* * *

A half-hour into the journey, T.K. and Kurt were playing out a hand of Old Maid, a game Kurt had taught T.K. months ago, on a lunch tray, while Kari tweaked the settings on her camera and Ms. Takaishi gazed out the window. A few more passengers had boarded, but the car still had a pleasant, secluded feel with its soft cool light. Then T.K. looked up, glanced at his watch.

"Uh-oh, here it comes."

"What? Is what?"

"Oh yeah," agreed Kari, "here it comes."

Ms. Takaishi was equally puzzled. "What on earth are you kids…?"

Then appearing in the window, filling it as if suddenly disclosed from behind a cloud, the massive white shape, perfectly fit in its frame, remaining stationary, immovable, while the countryside flicked by underneath it. Mt. Fuji.

In a second Kurt was kneeling up on his seat.

"The Fuji Mountain!" exclaimed, incorrectly using the _yama_ reading of mountain, instead of _san_. But the others smiled. Ms. Takaishi, in particular, although on a clear day you could see Mt. Fuji from her office window, hadn't looked closely at it for some time.

Kari started giggling uncontrollably, remembering when Kurt had first expressed his desire to see "the Fuji Mountain," in front of Izzy no less, when they were all in Akihabara. Then Izzy, who was never especially put off by Kurt's Japanese, and talked to him like any sensible adult, launched into his explanation: "_Actually, Mt. Fuji used to be a relatively obscure site for folk religion. In fact, when the first European emissaries were received by the shogunate, they wouldn't allow them within a hundred miles of the grand shrines at Ise or Izumo, but they had no problem letting them climb Mt. Fuji and even fire gunsin the crater and you aren't getting a word of this, are you, sorry nevermind._"

While she was reminiscing, Kurt had leapt from his seat and was walking back down the car, following the giant mountain as it slowly receded from view. Ms. Takaishi called after him to be careful; his childish eagerness brought of her maternal instincts.

T.K. and Kari were left smirking at each other. Then, after a moment, Kari took the opportunity to ask:

"Hey T.K., when was the last time you saw Tai?"

"About a few days ago. Why? Didn't you see him like last night?"

Kari gave a slight frown. "That's the thing. I'm kind of worried about him. I wondered if it was just my imagination."

"Why," asked Ms. Takaishi, "whatever seems to be the matter?"

"Well…I mean yesterday, he found out he couldn't give blood, because he's technically a minor. He will be until June, and he says it'll be _too late_ by then. I don't think I've ever seen him get so mad over something like that."

T.K. rubbed his chin. "Huh. I bet he's not thrilled that Matt turned eighteen last month, and he's already given blood. Twice."

"Honestly!" said his mother. "As if it were a contest."

"Oh, you know Tai, mom. He's got that competitive streak."

"And it's more than that," says Kari. "You can tell he's really anxious. So's everyone. But Matt's got his concert, Izzy's keeping busy with homework, and Mimi's started knitting all those blankets and sweaters. Tai just…isn't doing anything. He won't even go out to play soccer."

"Man," said T.K., "you should have invited him."

"I did! But—"

Then Kurt came back, holding a can of beer he'd bought from the lunch cart in a neighboring car, and suddenly it was impossible to have a serious discussion. A part of Kari felt grateful.

Ms. Takaishi snatched the beer out of his hand. "Kurt, honestly! Just because that poor woman couldn't tell you're only fifteen…"

* * *

There was one more hurdle of Japanese cultural awesomeness to clear before getting to the cherry blossoms themselves. There was a prime blossoming-viewing spot near Fukuyama station, right across from it in fact; in the grounds of its elegant, fully reconstructed medieval castle, the walls and towers of which slid into view past the bullet train windows. But Kurt had so worn himself out with the delights of the train, which seemed like a vacation in and of itself, that he only smiled as they pulled into the station.

"_Ladies and gentleman, we will soon be making a brief stop at…Fukuyama. The stop after Fukuyama will be…Hiroshima._"

Ms. Takaishi and T.K. shouldered the heavy bags with lunchboxes, and presents of Tokyo bottled _sake_ for Mr. Takaishi, and they disembarked.

"Beautiful day," smiled Kari.

"Yes! Very beautiful!" Then shutting his eyes, Kurt said in nearly perfectly accented Japanese: "Everything is beautiful."

"Except for Kari's face at five-thirty in the morning," coughed T.K.

"You shut up! I'm never sleeping over again! And your couch is so lumpy, what did you fill it with, rocks?"

"Is like old story of Europe," said Kurt, "Teekay, he puts dried pea under cushions, to know his future bride is sensitive lady."

"Who's _whose_ future bride, now…?"

And they went together down the broad station steps.

* * *

Heijiro Takaishi, eighty-five years old, and dressed in an old blue _yukata_ robe, waited alone for them on a plastic tarp. An open bottle of _sake_, over a foot tall, and a wooden box for drinking, stood on the tarp beside him. The cellphone in his hand looked something of an anachronism.

"Are you blind or something?" he barked into it. "I'm right in front of you. Look, I'm waving. I can see all three of you, along with that trampy outfit you're wearing. I can see too much of you in fact."

"Dad!" yelled his daughter, catching sight of him at the same instant.

He still spoke into the phone as they approached him: "Look, I understand you need another husband, but I hope you didn't come expecting to catch a man today. A Fukuyama man is no good for you. You expect to drag an honest country boy back to Tokyo with all your doodads and perfumes and…"

"_Dad_. Your remember your grandson Takeru, and his friends Kari and Kurt, three_ very young children_."

"Aw c'mon mom, we're not that young! And don't worry, grandpa, mom's got something going with this cop at the local station. She thinks I buy those stories about going to the press club every Friday night. Right, mom?"

"A cop! Good taste, Natsuko. You have good taste, I've always given you that. Like that last chiseled god you sunk your claws into."

"_Takeru Takaishi_! For your information, I'm doing an investigative report with Officer Morita on organized crime. Now dad, do you want your presents, or should we get right back on that train to Tokyo?"

"Presents, eh? I hope it's booze."

She sighed. "Yes.—And have you been drinking already? Dad, it's barely ten in the morning."

Kurt was snickering. He liked Mr. Takaishi, for obvious reasons.

All of them except Natusko were smiling as they took their places on the mat. The lunch boxes, and the _sake_ were brought out, and finally they looked up to the branches overhead.

Kurt inhaled deeply.

The park was relatively empty at such an early time on a weekday; that had been the idea. Eddies and whorls of landscaped green stretched away, to the bank of a narrow fast-moving river, and on the other side the castle wall rose up, a backdrop to the delicate _sakura_ petals.

Mr. Takaishi drank from his wooden box with the other hand curled on his knee. At some length he said, without looking at Kurt: "So, you're German."

"Yes."

"He's lost weight. Natsuko, are you feeding him properly?"

"No!" protested Kurt. "Is because Japanese food very healthy!"

"I see," said Mr. Takaishi then, nodding to himself, repeated: "German, eh." He looked as if he might add something. But he shook his head, and said simply: "Times sure change."

"Yes," Kurt agreed.

"Bet you're happy you got to see this. Pretty nice, isn't it?"

"Oh yes, very."

"Y'know, I guess some of those bigwigs in Tokyo said we shouldn't do it this year; that it's disrespectful to the dead or something. Well, fuck them! I'm eighty-five years old, no politician is going to tell me how to feel about anything. If I drop dead, which I will pretty soon, and I don't want any of you whining and bawling at my funeral, I want you to have a good time…"

"Dad."

"Sorry, Natsuko.—Anyway, it's too bad you have to go back home."

"Yes," said Kurt. Then for once, with clumsiness that was inadvertent, and painful to him: "I am sorry for myself. But, I am more sorry for the people of Japan."

"Listen here, Katto-san, you have to understand Japanese people. A Japanese man doesn't expect to be happy in life. We thank the gods if we wake up and the house isn't on fire."

"C'mon, Mr. Takaishi, don't exaggerate," said Kari, half in earnest. "Kurt came here to learn about Japan. He's serious."

"Well…" Mr. Takaishi burped, and wiped his lips. "He gets the idea."

And to their surprise, Kurt was nodding, seriously.

"Why, after the war…"

"_Da-ad_! You promised me you wouldn't talk about the war!"

"This is _after_ the war, Natsuko, I'm not talking about the war! Besides, why shouldn't I talk about it. If we don't mean anything bad, we should be able to talk about anything we like. Where was I.—Oh yes. Y'see, I was seventeen, and I'd been working at this steel mill up in Nagano-ken. Brought the siblings with me. Your aunts and uncles were all alive back then; well of course they were, it was so long ago.

"Anyway, I got back to the old house, where my parents had lived and their parents before them, and it was gone. There was nothing there, just a hole in the ground. I knew my parents had evacuated safely, but as for house, _poof_! And your aunt Akane…she was there. Must have been five years old, I don't suppose she remembers any of this. But she looks up at me and just smiles and says, 'all b'wowed up!' You know, like a girl her age. And I start smiling too, and I say, 'that's right, all b'wowed up.' Because really it was kind of funny, when you thought about it, the house being there one day and just gone the next, and here we go around thinking all the trash we own and the nonsense we care about is so important."

He lifted the box to his lips. When he brought it back down, Kurt, acting on a quick clumsy impulse, refilled it. Natsuko looked disapproving, but didn't stop him.

"Well!" said Mr. Takaishi and laughed, "let's all get drunk."

"Dad."

"What's the matter, Natsuko? These kids aren't driving anywhere. If they don't start drinking now, how will they hold their liquor when they're older? A man won't make it with the company if he can't hold his liquor. Why, I never would have earned that promotion if I hadn't drunk my boss's rival in the department under the table at the New Years' party, heh, heh. That promotion put you through college, you ungrateful girl."

"Aw, pretty please, mom?" said T.K.

"Oh, alright. One cup each, but that's it."

"Kurt should get two, he's twice as big as me."

"Yes! I agree with this!"

"You can have mine," said Kari, "I'll just take a sip…"

And so it went.

There was a strong breeze, scattering the petals from the branches. Soon they covered the tarp, and came to rest on the surface of their sake cups. Kurt picked one out and, shrugging, ate it. Mr. Takaishi squinted at him, as if the idea had never occurred to him before.

"How is it?" he asked in his gruff, tobacco-aged voice.

Kurt smiled. "Is good."

Kari covered her mouth.

Looking at Kurt's profile, then, she reflected that after all, cultural misunderstandings ran both ways.

Before Kurt's arrival, when they had heard he was German, she and T.K. realized they knew nothing about Germany. They went to Izzy to learn a song or poem, something to make him feel at home; and in doing so fell victim to one of Izzy's pranks, so devastating precisely because they were so rare.

Izzy taught them a "traditional German folk song" called Edelweiss. It was simple and sounded beautiful. When Kari asked why the lyrics were in English, Izzy replied that of course, in every country but Japan, everyone spoke fluent English, and the English version of the lyrics was more popular than the original German. That was the last time she trusted anything Izzy said without reference to Wikipedia. It turned out Edelweiss had been written by an American for _The Sound of Music_, which was set in Austria anyway. Kurt was in hysterics when they sang it for him. But perhaps Izzy had known what he was doing. Until that moment, Kurt had been timid, formal and correct. Immediately after, he revealed himself as the likeable screwball that today she would call a friend.

Without thinking she began singing softly:

"_Edelweiss, edelweiss…every morning you gre-et me…_"

T.K. perked up. His cheeks were already a bit pink from the _sake_, themselves two cherry blossom petals. He joined in:

"_Edelweiss, edelweiss…you look happy to me-et me…_"

Kurt couldn't resist one chuckle but, knowing the song perfectly well himself, took it up:

"Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow, forever…"

And even Natsuko, who had seen _The Sound of Music_ when it first came to the theaters, joined them:

"_Edelweiss, edelweiss…bless my homeland fore-ever_!"

Mr. Takaishi, of course, could only look puzzled, with listened with a patient smile:

_Blossom of snow may you bloom, and grow! Bloom and grow, forever!_

_Edelweiss, edelweiss, bless my homeland forever!_

* * *

AN: _It's not a writer's place to pat himself on the head, but I love T.K.'s grandpa. That is all._

_For reference, Cpt. Von Trapp singing Edelweiss from The Sound of Music: www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=vQe3W3eYPvk _

_And let's not mention the war: www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0 _

_Next up, Tai! Otanoshimi ni!_


	6. The Bus

AN: _Okay I guess I lied, the Crest of Courage makes an appearance in this chapter._

_Also, Tai does something horrible "for the first time;" if he did it before, and I just don't remember, let me know in the reviews_

* * *

**6. The Bus**

Tai lay on the bed. He was looking down at his legs, long, tanned, muscular. Then he looked up at the wall. On a low shelf (brought in from the living room, to replace the glass one that had broken on a certain day over a week ago) stood trophies: _Tokyo Municipal Bowl, 2001. Kanto Regional Soccer Championship, 2005. Team Captain Yagami Taichi._ And then, at the very center, the smallest artifact of all, barely visible from where he lay stretched out. In its bronze-colored case, the Crest of Courage.

The wall clocked ticked. It was coming up on eight p.m.

He heard padded footsteps in the hall. A moment later, through the half-open door, he caught sight of Kari with her arms full of groceries.

"Yo, Kari."

"Oh…hey, Tai."

She wouldn't meet his eyes. She'd been like that, the past few days. He knew why. None of them said anything. But they were all thinking it.

_Coward._

She in particular would never admit it. If he asked her, he knew just what she'd say. That he was doing everything he could. That she looked up to and respected him. But it was pretty sad when anyone needed that kind of validation from the people they were supposed to protect.

She hesitated. He got a better look at what the bags were full of, and cocked one eyebrow.

"Where are you going with all that bread?"

"Oh! Right, well. You know Mr. and Mrs. Kido live over in Shinbashi. There's no bread at the stores over there…but they've got lots of milk, and we don't have any milk, right? So it's an exchange."

"Heh. Good thinking. Oh, hey," he added, "spend some time over there, why don't you? Maybe stay for dinner if they ask you. They must be pretty lonely without Joe around."

Of course, Joe hadn't been around before, but she knew what he meant.

It had been sixteen days without a word. But the telephone lines were still down in that area, and there were a lot of people unaccounted for.

"Uh-huh. I was planning to."

"And give them my best, you hear?"

"Sure, Tai." Still she hesitated. Then she raised one of her big, probing eyes and said: "Tai? If there were anything wrong…you'd tell me, right?"

He shifted his body. "What do you mean? What's wrong."

"I don't know, just if there were something."

Tai sighed. "Listen, Kari," he said. "There are some things a man just has to do."

She was sharp to reply. "What do you mean? What are you going to do?"

"Nothing," he answered quickly. "I just mean, in general. I can't always talk about this stuff, okay?"

"Okay," she said cautiously.

"Now take care, huh?"

"I will. G'bye, Tai."

She was gone.

He got up, hauling his large frame out of bed. No more time to waste.

Sitting down at his desk, he ripped off a sheet of stationary and began writing:

_Dear Kari,_

_By the time you read this, I will be gone. _

_I'm going up there. I don't know what I can do, but there has to be something, and I can't just sit around here doing nothing._

_I know if I told you or mom, or dad, you'd try and stop me, which is why I'm not. I'm sorry to leave you alone, but I know you could never look up to me_

He crossed that out. Too obvious.

_I couldn't be a big brother to you if I couldn't do this. Please don't look for me. I'll be back as soon as I can, and I'll bring Joe with me, if I can find that loser._

He hesitated over that, biting the pen. The disaster area was huge. Assuming Joe was somewhere in it, the odds of them running into each other were next to zero. But hadn't he been thinking it anyway? He let it stay.

_Love, always Your Brother, Tai,_ he finished.

But in a moment of reason, he slid the note into a drawer instead of leaving it on the desk. After all he didn't know if his plan would come off right away. He took out his phone and dialed the travel agency's number he'd gotten yesterday.

"Hello? Yes, I'd like to book a roundtrip from Tokyo to Sendai. I know the train is still out, so probably the bus…what d'you mean, _nonessential travel discouraged_? This is essential…okay, great. Nonrefundable? Sure, no problem. Anywhere it runs from. Shinjuku? Got it. Geez, midnight? Nothing earlier? Okay…fine, great. Yagami Taichi. Just me. Yes, I'll pay by card, the number is…"

Then he waited. Realized he was breathing heavily, patted his chest.

"Okay," he said. "Great. Got it. Thanks so much."

He hung up. Now the simple part.

Everyone was bailing out up there, tourists especially. He'd probably have the hotel all to himself. With a guilty smile, he imagined it; swimming in the pool, maybe having a drink in the lounge if they believed he was twenty…by then he would have done something to deserve it. Nothing wrong with enjoying himself after that.

He typed into the hotel search engine: _One adult,_ _Sendai, Miyagi-ken, 03/28-_…04/10, say. That would give him some time, and he had the money saved up.

After a moment, the result came back: _We apologize, but no rooms could be found for the dates specified._

Tai stared at the screen. _Nuh-uh._

He tried messing with the dates a little. Maybe there was nothing tomorrow night, but after that…

_We apologize, but no rooms could be found for the dates specified._

Tai scratched through his thick hair. _No way._

He was mute in his surprise. Flexibility in thinking was not his strong suit. He didn't know why the hotels were all booked up, all he knew was the situation had narrowed around until only several, no, only two options remained. One was to give up.

The clock kept ticking. He looked across at it. In four hours…

_Now you're scared, boy, _he thought.

Courage, he knew, wasn't the absence of fear; but acting in spite of it. He was afraid, he admitted it. So, he was afraid.

He nodded to himself, opened the drawer, put the note on the desk, got up, shouldered the backpack with the bottled water, cakes and changes of clothes he'd filled up that morning, opened the door all the way, stepped out and—

Kari. Still holding the sacks full of bread.

Tai couldn't imagine the expression on his own face.

"Hello, Tai."

"You…" he gestured feebly back. "Heard…"

She nodded.

He dropped to his knees, right down on the carpet.

"Kari, please, you can't tell mom. She'd have a fit."

"Who said anything about mom, Tai? You think _I'm _going to let you do this? I have magical kid-sister powers, Tai. Just look in my eyes and you know instantly when you've had an incredibly dumb idea."

Kneeling, looking her in the eyes, he said firmly: "Look, I'm doing this no matter what. You heard them, the ticket's non-refundable. But…but I want you guys to believe in me."

Then, from the look in her eyes, Tai wondered if he hadn't been misreading her all along. She looked scared. Not for him, even. _Of_ him.

"Don't you trust me?" he whispered.

"I love you, Tai, you know that. But you're not yourself, you haven't been for the past few days. You're not thinking straight…"

"I'm thinking straighter than I ever have!"

She flinched back, and he felt that same shock. He wasn't angry with her; but did he look angry? Mustering all his effort he took the softest tone:

"You know people are dying up there."

"The army is helping them!"

"If there were enough of them, why do they keep sending more? And why isn't everything fixed yet?"

"It's not your job to fix everything, Tai!"

"But I can try…_I can try, damnit_!"

Then Kari started crying.

Tai's stomach fell out. He'd made his sister cry. That had never happened before. He'd done terrible things to her, inadvertently; he had practically almost killed her once. But this had never, ever happened.

"I…I'm so sorry, look…"

The shopping bags full of bread fell with a rustling crash to the floor. She bolted. Straight through the door of her room. She locked it a minute before he pumped the handle.

Tai stood back. Breathed. He knocked, gently, as if tapping a land mine.

"Kari? Kari?"

No answer.

Had he thought he was scared a minute ago? _Now_ he was scared. Not that she would tell mom and dad, ruin the plan. But that she didn't trust him. He felt like he'd killed her for real this time.

The backpack was still on his shoulders. He felt its weight, bracing him.

_Breathe. Breathe._

So he'd screwed up; but she'd understand. Pretty soon they would all understand.

He put his mouth to the crack of the door and said, as distinctly as he could:

"I'm sorry, okay? No matter what, the last thing I want to do is hurt you. But this is something I've got to do…and I'm leaving now."

* * *

Four hours later, at a bus stop outside Shinjuku station, Tai sat alone on a bench. Wrapped in his vinyl raincoat; after all, he was headed into cold weather. At times like this he kind of wished he smoked, or something cool like that, to pass the time.

A light rain was falling outside. It misted the street, and obscured the bodies moving in the darkness beyond the island of the bus stop. Sometimes the buses, large, patient, drifted in and out of view in front of him, blinking their lights at him. One on his left had been standing there for the last twenty minutes. He could see the driver inside the bright, (he assumed) warm cabin, reading a book, but he couldn't make out the title of the book.

For some reason, he kept remembering how his mother had hugged him after the quake.

It was a half day and he'd been at home, just spacing out on the sofa, watching a cooking show. They were making beef stew. Then the shaking started. The lamp fell and rolled off the coffee table but didn't break. He could hear his mother's voice, calling he thought from miles away:

"_Tai! Tai!_"

In those dazed two minutes he'd assumed she was running to him, making sure he was safe; but when it was over, and he picked himself up, she was nowhere to be seen. Had he imagined it? But she'd been right there in the kitchen.

Her voice again: "Tai, help me!"

He vaulted over the coffee table and through the door.

A wire frame holding pots and pans had collapsed, pinning her right leg to the floor. The sight of his mother, suddenly helpless in front of him, and her tear-streaked face, was one he'd never forget. It only took a second to haul the frame away, and she was unhurt; on her knees she clung to him.

She was glad he was safe. But he had also saved her.

Then as he was thinking, a hand came down on his left shoulder. Then another on his right. He was shocked, but not so much he jumped. Had a part of him expected this?

"Well, well, what have we here?" said a voice.

"Looks like a truant kid," said another. "I'm thinking we'd better bring this little guy home."

They were doing the voices of cops; but the voices themselves were younger. Voices he recognized. The first was Izzy's. The second, Matt's.

"Hey guys," he said, and suddenly felt so tired he could vomit. And he almost did, pitching forward.

"Easy there," said Matt. "You okay?"

Tai managed to nod.

Matt had stepped in front of him, but Izzy's hand was still on his shoulder.

"Listen, Tai," he said, soft but firm. "I think you've had a nervous breakdown. You may still be having one. Do you know who I am?"

"C'mon, Izzy, don't mess around."

"Good," said Izzy, recognizing only that Tai recognized him.

Matt leaned down in front of him. They locked eyes. Tai knew who they were, and why they were hear, but otherwise his mind was a blank. He didn't know what to say to them. Finally he asked:

"Kari told you guys, didn't she?"

Matt nodded.

"Did she…did she tell mom and dad?"

Matt shook his head.

Tai breathed out. "Good."

"We don't think there's any need to tell them," said Matt. "Of course, they're worried about you. It's pretty late. But we'll just tell them we were out doing karaoke or something, and we lost track of time. I'll vouch for you. Heck," he said, smiling, "even if it means catching flack from my own dad."

Tai shook his head.

"You know my concert's in three days. What, you'd skip out on me? After you helped me figure out the setlist and everything?"

"You guys don't get it."

"What don't we get, Tai? Tell us."

"I'm getting on that bus."

Then, right on cue, the big red bus pulled up behind Matt. Tai stood. Matt clapped both hands on his shoulders.

"No!"

"I'm getting on," he repeated.

Izzy at his side: "Tai, please! This would be crazy enough if you could find a hotel, but we know you can't, Kari looked at your search history!"

"I'll think of something when I get there, alright?"

"Like what," said Matt, his lupine face pressed into Tai's, and Tai could smell his breath, "sleep on the street? In an abandoned house?"

Tai looked past him. A few passengers, who had been sitting on neighboring benches, were boarding. The old bus driver was messing with his iPod.

Matt's voice persisted: "Or show up at a shelter? You think the people there don't have enough mouths to feed already, Tai?"

Izzy: "Didn't you think that maybe the hotels are putting up people who lost their homes? Or billeting soldiers?"

"Come on, Izzy, what does _billeting_ even mean."

"You know perfectly well what it means, Tai."

He made his break. Ducking around Matt, he managed to get his foot on the first step of the bus before Matt grabbed his right arm and Izzy the left. The bus driver looked down in mild alarm.

"So help me God," said Matt, "I fought you once, I fought you twice, I'll fight you again if I have to for your own good!"

"Please, Tai!" shouted Izzy.

For a moment they strained. Tai was really fighting. There was more give on Izzy's side; but he kept his grip all the same. Then suddenly Tai relaxed. He almost went limp, and they almost dropped him, but Matt put one arm behind him.

"You're pretty strong, Izzy," Tai whispered.

Izzy panted. Smiled weakly. "Thanks. I've been working out."

The bus driver blinked from under heavy black eyebrows.

"Hey, kid," he said. "You getting on or what?"

Tai looked back at him. It seemed as if a long time passed. Strangely, the bus driver didn't look impatient. At long last, Tai very slowly shook his head.

"Alrighty then, get your foot out the door."

Obediently he did. The driver pulled a lever, and the pneumatic door hissed shut. Even through the closed door he could hear the driver's voice:

"Midnight express, Shinjuku to Sendai, nonstop. We got a pretty empty coach today, so feel free to spread out. No smoking permitted…"

Tai hardly realized Izzy and Matt were dragging him back to the bench until they sat him down. Then they both stood back, looking embarrassed.

"You guys, I'm...sorry," he said in a tiny voice.

"You damn well better be," said Matt, at the same moment Izzy said: "There's nothing to apologize for." They looked at each other. Choked on a laugh. Then Tai was laughing too. Then he coughed, stopped, and sat there dumbfounded.

The bus was pulling away.

Izzy put a hand on his shoulder again.

"Tai," he said. "Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is admitting to yourself there's nothing more you can do."

Tai put his hand on top of Izzy's.

He opened his mouth, but as it turned out, there was nothing left to say.

* * *

AN: _Two chapters left to go, folks! Otanoshimi ni!_


	7. I Thought That Music Mattered

AN: _The 02 kids make out-of-character cameos as Matt's bandmates here; I don't know, there were the right number, so it seemed to fit._

* * *

**7. I Thought That Music Mattered**

It was just after noon on a Saturday. The girls' dorm was nearly deserted; everyone else was out, hanging around the city, going to the movies or museums or just hanging out in the park. Her roommate had even invited her to lunch, but Sora declined. She preferred not to say why. With everyone being so solicitous, if she said she was watching a live feed of her friends' benefit concert in Japan, the entire hall might have insisted on watching it with her. She felt protective of Matt; she didn't want anyone to know how much his band sucked.

But maybe they'd gotten better since she last heard them. It had, after all, been a while, and Matt was nothing if not persistent.

Her roommates' side of the room was messy with posters of Goth and Metal bands, a bass guitar in the corner, burger wrappers and empty cigarette packs on the desk. Sora's was clean and neat. For two such different people, they didn't fight as much as she'd been afraid at first. The only decoration on Sora's desk, next to the perfectly-made bed, was a tiny vase arranged with sprigs of young flowers she'd collected in the park. It reminded her of her mother.

Smiling to herself, she booted up her laptop, fired up Skype. Lonewulf225 was online. She'd always found it hilarious that even after misspelling "lone wolf," Matt hadn't been the first "lonewulf" on Skype. She placed the call.

A minute later, Matt's grungy, handsome face filled a small window on her desktop. The graininess and swampy lighting of Skype always made it look like you were talking to someone in a disaster zone; and after the disaster, that impression frightened her. Now she'd gotten used to it again.

"Hey," she said quietly.

Matt flipped his hair. "What's up, girl."

"Come on, Yamato, don't play it cool. I can see you're sweating bullets. It's what, five minutes to showtime?"

"Aw, man. You always see right through me."

She giggled.

"It's just…" he paused; his pixilated image jumped. He put a hand on his forehead. "I always sing about this dumb boy-girl stuff. I mean, it was what I thought about all the time. Now it's like, how did I ever think _that_ was important?"

"People can still love each other, Matt. That hasn't changed."

He sighed. "I know. But I'm holding off on it tonight, and I'm out of my element, you know? I thought about singing the national anthem or something; but it's slow and kind of creepy, and it was written by fascists or whatever. Well not written by them, sung by them.—You guys are lucky, the American anthem has a monster hook, and a beat you can dance to."

"Oh, cut it out, I haven't turned into a foreigner yet."

"Anyway I'm feeling pretty good about this setlist, just I wish I'd practiced more…"

"Oh Matt, you overthink everything. You're as bad as Izzy sometimes. Just…just get out there and kick some ass, alright?"

"I'll do my best. Not promising anything."

"I mean it. Your number one fan's counting on you. Your number one fan in America, anyway."

He smiled, and when the image glitched, the smile lingered there for a minute as the rest of his face slid away.

"Thanks, Sora," he said.

"Anytime, Lone Wulf," she said.

* * *

Matt closed his laptop. The live feed they were sending Sora, overseen of course by their resident tech wizard, Izzy, was streaming from the projector's booth of the Odaiba Senior High auditorium. That left him backstage, in a tall room draped with black curtains, that had a spooky, symbolic feel like a chamber of judgment in some video game, with the rest of the Teenage Wolves.

"Alright, guys," he said, and gripped his guitar by the neck. "Showtime."

The curtains were opening.

Onstage their MC, T.K., was winding up his spiel:

"…so give it up for the one, the only, my big brother, and yes ladies he _is_ single…Ya-ma-to, _Ishida_, and the Teenage Wolves!"

A cheer followed. Bigger than he could have hoped for. He glanced at his rhythm guitarist, nodded, and stepped forward.

The lights washed over him. They'd performed at live houses already, and he knew how to work a crowd, but this was the biggest crowd he'd ever had to work. The auditorium seated six hundred people and was full almost to capacity. Most of them were his classmates, and their parents; but the fliers Izzy and Tai put up had drawn some others, he saw strange adults out there. All looking up at him. Smiling. Waiting.

Matt swayed a bit. Before the event he had, perhaps unwisely, consumed a beer that Joe's brother Shin, one of the event's main sponsors, had purchased for him. Hoping his hesitation, head down in front of the microphone, would be mistaken for a veteran musician's cool, he breathed in. Then he looked up and shouted:

"Odaiba! Are you ready to rock!"

"Yeah!" came the reply.

"Hey! I can't hear you, I said are you ready to _rock_!"

"_Yeah_!"

He breathed again. Shook his head. "Be honest," he said in a normal voice.

Silence.

"We're tired," he said, "and some of us are pretty sad, or even angry. Well, I'm not here to make you feel bad. Feeling bad won't help anyone. You did your part to help; now I want you all—you'd better listen to me—to feel good about yourselves! You guys are unbreakable! You're stainless steel! That's how we roll in Odaiba. Can I get a heck yeah!"

"_Heck yeah_!"

"Oh—whatever, sorry moms and dads, can I get a _hell _yeah!"

"_Hell yeah_!" came the overwhelming response, with not a single dissenting voice, even from a mom or a dad.

"Odaiba!" Matt roared. "Born and raised, son! Tokyo! Represent! We don't run, and we don't hide, and when it gets tough we get tougher! Yeah!"

"_Yeah_!"

"Now we're gonna play a song for you guys, I think it's the best song ever written. I don't know, maybe _Purple Haze_ is better. But this one's pretty good. I wrote it with my friend Tai, and it's called _Turn My Courage Into Wings_, so listen up!"

"_Yeah_!"

"Now introducing the Teenage Wolves…over here on rhythm guitar, give it up for—_Motomiya Daisuke_!"

"Yeah!"

"On drums, that studious little kid, _Hida Iori_!"

"Yeah!"

"On bass guitar, a girl who don't take no lip, _Inoue Miyako_!"

"Yeah!"

"And last but by no means least, on backup vocals, my good friend—Tachikawa—Mimi!"

"_Yeah_!"

. And at that, Matt savaged his guitar with the pick and launched into the first verse:

_Yuuki wo, tsubasa ni shite,_

_Ima sugu, tobitatou yo,_

_Donna toki date_

_Kimi wo shinjiteru…_

"I'll turn my courage into wings / And fly away now / No matter when / I believe in you…"

* * *

In the projectionist's booth, Izzy sat back in chair. The webcam was trained on the stage for Sora' benefit. There wasn't much more he had to do.

The door opened. Tai stepped in.

"Hey," said Izzy.

"Hey, man," said Tai. "Having fun?"

"Well. This kind of music isn't really _for_ me."

"Heh, yeah. They got pretty good, though, right? They're tearing it up! I mean geez, I can barely hear them in here, and I feel like dancing."

"I'm not surprised. They were practicing like anything.—Say Tai, did you really co-write this song? I mean…the lyrics aren't half-bad."

Tai scratched the back of his neck.

"I told him maybe he should write a song about courage," he said. "That's all."

"I suspected as much."

Izzy sat there, illuminated by the soft blue-green lights of a dozen monitors. Although he hadn't done very much that evening, to Tai, he looked exhausted. Maybe it was a trick of the light.

"Um, Izzy?"

"Yeah?"

"Well…you guys really saved my butt the other day. And I just wanted to say, y'know, thanks, and…I kinda wanted to return the favor? Cause _you've_ been really wound-up about something, ever since, y'know. I noticed. I figured it was the same thing as me. But I don't know."

Izzy watched Matt onstage. Nobody could have guessed his attention was focused anywhere else.

"What sort of thing do you mean, Tai?"

"I dunno! I'm dumb as a bag of hammers, right? But I know when something's going on. Maybe I don't know what it is, but I know it's there."

* * *

"Thank you!" shouted Matt. "Thank you. No, seriously. You guys are the best. Again that was _I'll Turn My Courage Into Wings_, and if you hated it, blame my friend Tai, cause he wrote most of it…"

A round of cheers, and mock-booes for his fake self-disparagement.

"Next up…we've got a song in English, by some band actually from England. I can't pronounce their name, but if you're about my age, maybe you've heard it. The song is called _Tubthumping_. No idea what that means. Yeah, it's English."

Then a vocal sample of an elderly British man, queued up by Izzy, played through the auditorium:

"_I thought it mattered. I thought that music, mattered. But does it? Bollocks. Not compared to how people matter_."

And Matt tipped his finger at Mimi, standing beside him, who had confined herself to vague whispers during their opening number. Daisuke struck a few chords and, shutting her eyes, lifting her chin skyward, she began:

"_We'll be singing…when we're winning…we'll be singing…_"

And again Matt thrashed his guitar and sang:

"_I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down! I get knocked down, but I get up again…!_"

* * *

In the projector's booth, Izzy laced his hands together. He rested his chin on them. Tai watched him.

"It's the news," he said. "I can't take it."

"Well…sure, it's hard on all of us. But I thought you weren't watching the news."

"I've watched enough of it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. The American nuclear chief said the Fukushima reactor pool was empty, when he had no reason to believe that. And according to Fox News, the Shibuya Eggman _concert hall_ is a nuclear reactor about to blow us all up."

"We all make mistakes," said Tai. "They're so far away. I mean, they're doing the best they can, right? They care…"

"Don't you get it? The world _doesn't_ care about Japan, and they never will. At least not enough to get their facts straight. Sure, everyone likes feeling bad about something. But they still see us like this miniature country full of samurai and geisha. Just look at Kurt…"

"Come on, man! Kurt's a cool kid."

"I know! I know he is. But he still sees Japan as this…magical, mystical playground. Not as a country full of living, breathing people."

"Izzy." Tai's face betrayed genuine surprise. "I never would've figured _you_ to be such a…well, a bigot."

Izzy gave a deep sigh. "I'm not saying foreigners are responsible. We're the ones to blame. We don't _want_ to be understood. If a foreigner wants to say he's Japanese, that _this is his country_—we don't accept that. We never have. So aren't we, aren't we getting what we deserve? No wonder all the foreigners are leaving…"

Then he shook his head. When he went on, his tone had changed:

"Or at least, that's what I _was_ thinking. Then I realized. I was the same as you, Tai; I kept telling myself it wasn't getting to me, when it was. And I was dealing with it the way I deal with everything, by thinking. And thinking, and thinking, as if there were something going on here only _I _could understand…"

"Izzy."

From outside, Mimi's voice intermingling with Matt's:

"_We'll be singing…_"

"_I get knocked down…_"

"…_when we're winning…_"

"…_but I get up again…_"

"I'm selfish, Tai. I'm just like everyone else. We always try to make any tragedy about _us_.

"Hey." Tai smiled. "So what's wrong with being like everyone else?"

Izzy looked up, his eyes as ever curious. "What do you mean?"

"Well…I guess I mean, if it's not about us, what is it about? Maybe it's about everyone, even the people nothing happened to. Because we're all in it together."

At that, Izzy was quiet, thinking. After a second, he nodded.

Onstage Matt bowed, his hair falling into his eyes even as he brushed it back, saying: "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you…!"

"Hey Tai, can I say something horrible? I mean, like, really bad?"

"I don't see why not. You can say whatever you want, man."

"It's something this English playwright said, this guy named George Bernard Shaw, and it's been running through my head this whole time. He said…_life does not cease to be funny when people die, any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh_."

"Heh," said Tai. "Ouch."

* * *

AN: _Just one chapter left!_

_The first song Matt sings: www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=aE1sushTg9Q Yes, it's actually Tai's image song; Matt's own didn't fit. Also his version isn't this softcore, Jefferson Airplane-y one; more like he was singing it with Blink 182 in the middle of a three-day coke binge._

_The second song: www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=3hQDuJJjpvs _Almost_ the most annoying song from the 90's but that honor goes to Brimful of Asha by a hair. Still, you got to love it at times. This Youtube version doesn't have the spoken-word intro, but it's there on the single._

_Finally, for reference, the Japanese national anthem: www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=uKcVYSS-Uv0 Personally I find it quite beautiful, but if I had a benefit concert I probably wouldn't sing it either, due to its troublesome political connotations._


	8. Seijitsu

**8. Seijitsu**

"He has been very frightened and thinks himself a great coward and therefore feels no pride; but he was done everything his duty demanded and perhaps a bit more."

—C.S. Lewis, _The Screwtape Letters_

The question is not whether some part of the human personality survives death. The question is, which is more real, life or death? Which is a slave to the other? Are human beings alive in death, or, if their extinction is complete, are they dead in a sense even before death? Is music a phenomenon interrupting silence, or could it be the other way around? Is darkness itself capable of extinguishing a candle?

* * *

The bus, bound for Narita airport, began to pull away. A blonde head leaned out the window, and long, muscular arm waved:

"_Sayonara_!" yelled Kurt.

While Kari stood still, looking after him, T.K. tripped forward and yelled back:

"Bye-bye!"

Kurt had been about to duck back inside, but couldn't resist another wave: "_Auf wiedersehen_!"

"_Matta, ne_!" yelled Kari.

"_Ciao_!"

"_Zaijian_!"

"_Au revoir_!"

"Hey kid," yelled the bus driver, "are you a dog or something? Get your head in the damn bus!"

* * *

Mr. Tachikawa stood on his apartment balcony, looking out at the sleek, futuristic skyscape of Odaiba; that artificial island, made, as people make so many things, because it hadn't been _there_.

He spoke into his cellphone: "I'm sorry, Keiichi, I really appreciate the offer. I don't know how to explain. I just know it would break Mimi's heart if I told her she had to leave…"

He listened. In the distance, the loop line departed the station and set off dutifully toward the Tokyo Big Sight.

"Thanks," he said. "I knew you'd understand. Don't worry. I'll have a cold _chu-hi_ and a box of Mild Sevens waiting for you when you get back…"

* * *

In the kitchen of the Yagami apartment, Mr. Yagami marched up and down, hands behind his back, while his family stood in a line in front of the stove, upright like soldiers.

"Listen up, men," he said. "As you know, there is a planned blackout today from eight p.m. to midnight. I'm sure we're all eager to do our part for the nation, but unpreparedness is the enemy. Lieutenant Yuuko!_ Is_ everything in the household checked and secure?"

"Sir, yes sir!" said his wife.

"Glad to hear it. Corporal Taichi, _did_ you ask the Ishidas to tape everyone's shows for tonight, like you promised?"

"Sir, yes sir!" said Tai.

"Special Snack Procurement Agent Hikari, _have_ the snacks been procured?"

With that, Kari could no longer keep a straight face, and one after another they broke down laughing.

* * *

Izzy lifted the teacup, filling his nose with the delicate tang of chamomile. He'd been suffering allergies, like always in spring, and the hot tea did something to help. He sipped, then returned his attention to the trigonometry problem.

Suddenly Chieko was beside him, her blue hoop skirt filling his vision.

"Is the tea to my Master's liking?"

"Oh—yeah. Um, I didn't think you were working today."

"I just got in." She winked, then discreetly passed him a thin, cloth-bound black book.

"Here's those poems you leant me," she whispered. "Thanks. They were really interesting."

"Cool, I'm…glad."

Then before he could say another word, she flounced off, humming to herself. Izzy scratched his head helplessly. He glanced down at the translated volume of W.H. Auden he'd leant her the other day. Something was stuck between the pages. He pulled it out. A note in pink pen.

_Dear cutie-pie,_

it read.

_Since you're so dense (but in the most adorable way), let me spell it out for you. Tonight, six-o-clock, east exit of Akihabara station. Don't bring flowers or anything, just your smile._

_Yours,_

_Yotsuya Chieko_

Izzy blushed to the roots of his hair. Then, as his shaking hand caused the teacup to rattle on the saucer, he realized his thumb had been covering up the last line:

_p.s. If you're really not into me, do you know if that drummer from your friend's band is available?_

* * *

Mimi was sitting on the couch, knitting a hat, when her cellphone rang. She carefully set her work down before answering.

"Hello?"

"Hi, it's Matt…"

"Oh hey, what's up?"

She picked up her glass of lemonade from the coffee table.

"Are you watching TV?"

"Hmm? No, why do you ask?"

"Well, are you at home? Turn it on if you are."

"Matt," she sighed, "I thought we'd been over this. I don't want to watch those depressing news stories anymore. If anything happens, I'll hear about it from…"

"Trust me on this, Mimi," he said. "_Turn on the TV._ Channel six."

His tone was so intense, but so flat, she had no idea if something good or bad had happened.

She took a long sip of lemonade. Then she pressed the remote button, and scanned up from channel two to six.

The lemonade glass slid out of her hand and smashed deafeningly on the floor. She was on her feet. Not moving an inch as the lemonade oozed over shards of glass toward her feet, she stared at the screen.

"Oh my God," she whispered.

Her father rushed into the room.

"Honeybunch, what happened!"

Mimi pointed at the TV.

"…here at this overcrowded rural hospital, and this young doctor has agreed to speak with us. Can you tell us your name, sir?"

The pasty, sticklike young man, with thick glasses and messy chin-length blue hair, wearing a dirty smock, with a dazed look as if he had stepped off an airplane in another time zone, blinked at the camera and said:

"Kido Jyou."

"You'll excuse my saying so, but aren't you a bit young for a doctor?"

"Um, I'm in medical school," said Joe, "I'm interning here for my spring semester…Oh, excuse me just a minute."

He quickly ducked back, and ran up to an old woman in a wheelchair who was making slow progress in the background.

"Excuse me, ma'am? Ma'am? Are you being assisted?"

"Why yes…they told me to see a Doctor Ozawa in this wing. Do you know where he might be, young man?"

"Straight ahead, five doors down on the right. He's with a patient right now, but he should be free in a minute. Can you see it?"

She squinted. "Why, yes! Thank you ever so much."

Joe came back, rubbing his glasses on a corner of his smock.

"So, where are you from originally?" asked the reporter, sounding a bit ashamed of himself.

"Tokyo...Odaiba."

"Have you thought about going back there?"

Joe blinked again. He put his glasses back on.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't understand the question."

"Have you thought about going back to your family in Tokyo? They must be worried about you."

"I'm a medical intern. This is my job."

"But aren't you afraid of the radiation?"

He looked away. His eyes followed the old woman in the wheelchair, who had disappeared off to the right. Softly he asked:

"Do you think that woman is going anywhere?"

"Well…obviously it would be difficult for her…"

"Then neither am I," said Joe.

"I understand."

Mimi's father had been holding her, but she broke away from him, and knelt down in front of the television. Joe appeared to be looking directly at her.

* * *

The Ishida family, who had been eating dinner together, consoling T.K. over the loss of his friend, looked up at the television in the corner of the ramen shop.

"Man," said Matt. "Joe's fucking awesome."

"Yamato!" said his mother. "Language."

Mr. Ishida lit a cigarette.

"You have to admit, Natusko," he said, "the kid is pretty fucking awesome."

Onscreen the reporter asked:

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell our viewers? Perhaps your friends and family?"

"Well, uh. I'm really sorry for making you guys worry. I've just been kind of busy, and. Um." He polished his glasses again. Then muttered to himself: "What the heck, I'm risking my life already." He looked straight at the camera and said: "Tachikawa Mimi! I don't know if you're watching this but…I've liked you for a long time, I think you're the nicest, most beautiful girl in the world, and I was just wondering if maybe you'd go out with me sometime? Like, not now obviously, after I get back. And if the answer is no I'm _really_ sorry, cause I probably just made things super-awkward for you, and…aw, geez."

"Best of luck with that," said the reporter. "That's the news from Miyagi-ken, back to you, Matsumoto-san…"

* * *

On April eighteenth, domestic flights out of Sendai airport resumed.

Two weeks after that, six children, sitting across from their parents, waited in the arrivals lounge of Haneda airport at four thirty-seven in the morning. They sky was still dark outside. Kari had fallen asleep, leaning against her brother. No one had the heart to wake her up.

Matt was starting to doze off too, his chin brushing the collar of his shirt, when T.K. shook him.

"Hey Matt! You guys, look! That must be it coming down!"

A moment later, the announcement:

"Ladies and gentlemen, Japan Airlines flight twenty-seven is now arriving at terminal b-nineteen."

Kari jolted upright.

"I wasn't asleep! I wasn't asleep!"

Tai laughed, ruffled her hair. "Of course not.—Okay everyone, ready?"

Mr. Ishida grunted an affirmative, as he and Mr. Kido hauled a large bolt of cloth out from underneath their seats. The other adults quickly moved to help.

Passengers, exhausted, but many looking happy and grateful, began to file out of the gate. A few of them spared a curious glance for the group, standing off to one side, that appeared to be struggling with an enormous bedsheet.

A tall, very thin young man in a suit, covering his yawn with an elbow, came into view. Then he stopped dead in his tracks.

In front of him a banner, long enough to be held up, end-to-end, by six children and his two grown brothers, read:

_Congratulations! Welcome home, Joe!_

Joe smiled. Raised one hand, waved shyly.

"Hey, guys," he said. "I'm back."

Suddenly a brown-haired girl in a miniskirt was punching him furiously on the arm. Between each blow she screamed at him: "You—big—inconsiderate—total—loser! How _dare_ you embarrass me like that! I could have died of shame! I…could have died…"

Then Mimi was sobbing and, with a pronounced swallow, he put his arms around her. The next second his face was obscured from view as Mimi, standing on tip-toes, gripped it on either side and planted a ferocious kiss.

Tai put one hand in front of Kari's eyes. She swatted it down.

T.K. turned to Matt. "Well. What do you think?"

"I think," grumbled Matt, "that smug jerk just set the bar for the rest of us _way_ too high."

"That's Joe," said Tai, shaking his head. "Such a massive dork he breaks the scale and loops back around to cool."

Kari looked up at him.

"Are things back to normal now?" she asked, in uncharacteristic, childlike earnest.

Were they? Would they ever be? Had they been normal to begin with? Or perhaps, thought Tai, they had become normal for the first time. Only in times like these did people, at least so many of them, act the way they were supposed to.

He looked at Mimi, who hadn't come up for a breath of air in twenty seconds.

"Only if you call that normal," he said.

* * *

_Owari_

(The End)

* * *

AN: _Thanks so much for reading, everyone! A brief afterward follows._

_As for this chapter, it would have been a spoiler to say so above (not that everyone didn't see this ending coming a mile away), but "seijitsu" is of course Joe's crest. Honestly, having studied Japanese for like seven years total, I'm no closer to resolving the debate over whether it's best translated "reliability" or "faithfulness." Really, if I didn't know anything about Digimon, my instinct would be translate _Joe's_ as Sincerity and Mimi's as Purity: but I think Reliability and Sincerity better fit their personalities. Go figure._

_Apologies of course if you aren't a fan of the Joe/Mimi pairing (back in my day we called it Mimoe, but I see Jyoumi more often now). I'm not much of a shipper, and there's no one relationship I strongly support; but since Joe is the hero of this story, he gets the girl, and of all the Joe pairings Mimoe seems the most...obvious to me. And while I'm at it, a million apologies for pairing Izzy with an OC! I just couldn't resist that scene once I thought of it. You're always free to imagine the date doesn't go well, and Izzy marries Kari, or Sora, or Tai, or Mimi after Joe tragically succumbs to radiation poisoning after all._

_Lastly, I know medical school doesn't work that way; nobody gets an internship right out of high school. I've bent some rules to make this story work, but I hope that it does._

_Cheers!_

_Incanto_


	9. Afterward

**Afterward**

When the March 11th Great Tohoku Earthquake hit, I was lucky enough to be at home; I wasn't stranded like the kids in the first chapter, and many people in real life. I also consider myself lucky to have been in Japan; I don't envy anyone in Sora's position.

I wrote this story based on my own experience, and stories I've heard in the days since. I didn't set out to literally tell my own story though, and I'm surprised how many real-life details made it in anyway, in spite of it being about eight different characters with wildly different personalities. Like Kurt, I was ordered by my school to return home (I haven't yet, but will soon); like Izzy, I was over-analytical and skeptical of the media coverage; like Tai, in a fit of temporary insanity, I bought a bus ticket for Sendai, only to think better of it at the last minute. Joe's behavior was inspired by a friend of mine, likewise a medical student who, when our school told us to flee west to Kyoto (before they canceled the program entirely), instead went north, straight into the disaster area, to check on his old host family.

I suppose I could dedicate this story to the memory of the disaster victims, but that'd be kind of hokey. I'd prefer to dedicate it to the memory of Digimon Adventure, that awesome show that taught us such great values; and the great Digimon fanfic writers from the day, like v_voltaire (she goes by Volta Arovet now), Rb, Leto, and so many others I sadly can't remember. Thanks for making my childhood suck a little less.

**Links**

I was inspired to write this story largely by this Digimon retrospective by JesuOtaku, over at That Guy With The Glasses:

thatguywiththeglasses dot com / videolinks / ir / jo / jar / 27539-digimon-adventure-part-one

If you're a Digimon fan it's definitely worth a look, especially part two where she talks about the characters. She also has a funny "Top Fifteen Dumbest Things Izzy Ever Said" video, which gives the phrase "trigonometry trivia" a sinister new meaning.

The last thing I want to do is guilt-trip anybody, but if you are looking for ways to help, I was told about this nonprofit anthology: www dot quakebook dot org. To be honest I haven't bought it myself, so I can't vouch for its quality; but it looks interesting, and I'm sure you guys can find the Red Cross website perfectly well without my help.

The best way to help though in my opinion, is to pay us a visit! I don't know, maybe not like _right_ _now_, but someday. I swear you'll have the time of your life. I know I did.

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that I wrote a novel you can buy if you like. Somehow I feel it would break the Terms of Service to include a link even in masked form, so if that piques your interest, by all means go to Amazon and search "Taroko Gorge."

Champions of the Digital World, son,

Love & Peace

Incanto, AKA SisterVigilante, AKA Jacob Ritari 2011


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